Best of Three: Serena's foot injury, Atlanta tourney debut, more

2. Georgia on my mind: The Atlanta Tennis Championships may lack a title sponsor. But this new ATP event, which kicks off today, landed a fine player field.

2. Georgia on my mind: The Atlanta Tennis Championships may lack a title sponsor. But this new ATP event, which kicks off today, landed a fine player field. Most of the top American players have all entered and that include both John Isner (who has strong Georgia ties) and Andy Roddick, who took a late wild card. If Indianapolis could have lured a field like this, it might still have the sanction. Given the Atlanta field and concurrent fields at the European, perhaps it will rekindle talk of regionalized tours, subdividing the ATP by geographic regions.

3. Rank offense: How often have casual -- and even not-so-casual -- fans scanned the seedings at a major and wonder how such-and-such player managed to crack the Top 20 when no one was looking? Well, one explanation is that they gorged themselves on points during a soft spot in the schedule. While most of the top stars -- Federer, Nadal, Sharapova, Williams, Murray, Djokovic, et al. -- take a long break after Wimbledon, other players are more opportunistic. There were multiple events held last week. Kaia Kanepi, showing no ill effects from blowing match points to reach the Wimbledon semis, won in Palermo. Nicolas Almagro upset fan favorite Robin Soderling to win in Bastad. In Prague, Agnes Szavay won her second title in two weeks. Albert Montanes, now sneaking up on the Top 20, won in Stuttgart. These are not big-time titles to be sure. But the points count all the same.