Davydenko, Robredo reach second round in Sopot

Tennis Betting Lines

07/31/2007 - Sopot, Poland (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Top-seeded and defending champion Nikolay Davydenko of Russia and second-seeded Spaniard Tommy Robredo were among Tuesday's first-round winners at the clay-court Orange Prokom Open.

Davydenko won his sixth straight match at this event by getting past Romanian Andrei Pavel 6-3, 6-4. The gritty Russian defeated German Florian Mayer in last year's finale here.

The veteran Pavel was a finalist in Umag this past Sunday.

Up next for the world No. 4 Davydenko will be Argentine Martin Vassallo Arguello.

Robredo held off Polish wild card Lukasz Kubot 6-4, 5-7, 6-1 at SKT Sopot. Robredo, who captured this event back in 2001, will face surging Belgian Steve Darcis in the round of 16.

A pair of seeded Argentines bowed out on Day 2, as No. 3 Juan Ignacio Chela was whipped by his countryman Sergio Roitman 6-1, 6-2 and No. 5 Agustin Calleri was dismissed by pesky Austrian Stefan Koubek 0-6, 7-6 (7-3), 7-5. Roitman also bested Chela last week in Kitzbuhel.

A seventh-seeded Mayer avoided an upset by handling Argentine lucky-loser Juan Pablo Brzezicki 6-3, 6-3. The capable Mayer lost in each of the last two finals here.

Another upset occurred when Serbian qualifier Boris Pashanski stopped eighth- seeded Italian Potito Starace 6-7 (4-7), 6-2, 3-1, as Starace retired in the third set. Starace was last week's runner-up in Kitzbuhel.

Igor Andreev completed a victory against Ecuador's Nicolas Lapentti. The Russian was leading 6-0, 3-3 when play was stopped here because of rain on Monday. Andreev promptly won the second set, 6-4, on Tuesday.

Other first-round winners were the aforementioned Vassallo Arguello, Frenchmen Gilles Simon and qualifier Olivier Patience, Belgian Kristof Vliegen and the qualifier Darcis, who captured his first-ever ATP title in The Netherlands just two weeks ago. Darcis defeated Olympic gold medalist Nicolas Massu of Chile 6-7 (8-10), 7-6 (7-0), 6-4 on Tuesday.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.