Daily Bagel: Just getting warmed up

The Daily Bagel is your dose of the interesting reporting, writing and quipping from around the Internet.

• A classic video from 2007, with some scruffy ATP players attempting to sing Jingle Bells, though if you're the world No. 1, I guess you can opt out. Boy, that's some hair on you, Andy Murray.

• Is it just me, or is this diatribe against the prematch hitting session a bit much considering we're talking about something that lasts some five minutes? To quote Andy Roddick, responding to similar anti-warm-up comments from John McEnroe at Wimbledon, "I think it’s easy to not have the warm-up when you’re the one not doing it anymore." Roddick added: "I’ve been sitting around for four and a half hours, and he wants me to go serve 145 [mph]. That’s irresponsible is what it is.”

• The ATP's search to replace Adam Helfant is finally over. Brad Drewett is the Tour's new leader.

• Steve Tignor, continuing his review of the best matches of 2011, takes a look at the Rome semifinal between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray: "This is a Murray conundrum: He needs his backhand to work like a forehand, and vice-versa. In other words, because his forehand is essentially a rally shot rather than a kill shot, the way it is for Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic, he needs his backhand to do more of the offensive work."

• Jon Wertheim gives his awards for the 2011 season.

• My Russian isn't perfect, so this is either Marat Safin's official Duma photo or he's decided to re-enroll in an East Coast boarding school.

• Nice interview with USTA national coach Mike Sell, who used to coach Monica Seles and has also worked with Serena Williams and Donald Young.

• Here's Roger Federer's mother, Lynette, in a French interview (via Google Translate): "When he was little, people were telling us how talented he was. But he was also good at football to table tennis to squash." This confirms what I thought: Roger could have been a table tennis legend. But I guess plain old regular tennis works, too.

• Petra Kvitova has been named Czech athlete of the year.

Part I

Part II

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