Daily Bagel: Inside Nadal's injury

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

• Video: Rory McIlroy was in New Haven to see girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki before heading to Bethpage this weekend. He took some time to show off his golf skills, including driving a tennis ball into a tunnel. That's pretty good.

• Tennis.com reports, Angel Ruiz-Cotorro, who has been treating Nadal since he was 11-years old, told Spanish media that the injury, diagnosed as Hoffa's syndrome, "is annoying and painful, but not significant."

Ruiz-Cotorro said that Nadal suffers from the disease Hoffa's syndrome, which is  "fat inflammation" behind the patellar tendon and is part of the tendonitis suffered by Nadal. Hoffa's syndrome occurs when the fat pad becomes pinched between the distal thigh bone and the kneecap.

• Great tactical breakdown on the ATP site on how Roger Federer's forehand beat Novak Djokovic in Cincinnati on Sunday.

Federer turned 58 shots in the Ad court into forehands, leaving him hitting only 50 backhands for the match. It makes it hard for Djokovic to attack Federer’s backhand if Federer simply refuses to hit it. Overall, Federer hit more than two out of three (67%) groundstrokes as forehands for the match.

• Jon Wertheim takes a look at the NCAA's proposed changes to college tennis. He rightfully points out the justifiable reasons behind many of the changes, but that a match tiebreak (instead of a third set) is still a non-starter.

The third set is the guts and heart and meat of college tennis. It is here that mental and physical fitness is brought to bear. The third set becomes a referendum on who you are. It's where all those "life lessons" are dispensed and absorbed. Reducing the third set to a tiebreaker cheapens the entire experience.

• Steve Tignor ponders a Rafa-less U.S. Open.

• Svetlana Kuznetsova, Kaia Kanepi and Flavia Pennetta have withdrawn from the U.S. Open.

• Need a dictionary to decode Brad Gilbert's player nicknames? Here you go.

• Maria Sharapova played Root Beer Pong with Jimmy Fallon in what can only be described as standard Root Beer Pong attire.

• Non-tennis: "Baby Got Back" as sung by the movies. Fistpump, internet.

• Bonus Video: What is it with tennis players and golf? Maria Sharapova and Novak Djokovic do their part to combine the sports. It's dorky but it works.