It's Only Going to Get Harder

So both tours dipped their toes into the summer hard-court season last week with the men playing in Indianapolis and the women in Stanford.

But as far as things go for the men, the situation's definitely about to pick up. The sixth stop on this little thing they like to call the Masters Series is in Canada right now. And this is possibly the first of four big ones the big three—Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic (vote here for who you think will win)—are all competing in over the course of the next month. And it's just not them that will be there—their other top 10 compadres will be on the scene as well.

The women are still out in Cali, this time in L.A. Jelena Jankovic is the top seed out there, but I can't really call her the favorite to take the title with this being her first tournament in a little while. You could say that about a lot of the players there. The women's tournaments, over the past couple of years, have been kind of hard to call for me. It seems like there are more last-minute withdrawals going on—particularly during this part of the year. I think it was the year Ana Ivanovic won in Canada where that tournament got wrecked by withdrawals before things even got started.

The addition of the Olympics has really changed the way the weeks leading up to the U.S. Open will be handled on both tours. We'll see how it goes!

(You know, I was actually going to wrap it up with the above sentence, but this wouldn't be Tennis Talk, Anyone? without some kind of prediction being made, seeing as how I haven't done one in so long! So here's what I'll give you to nibble on. And I'm expanding the crystal ball's vision beyond this week, to boot!)

Two out of the ATP's big three will skip the next Masters event in Cincinnati.

Tennis Talk, Anyone? has spoken!

(Photo: AP)