THE IDES OF MARCH??

In tennis, confidence comes and goes quickly. Remember how things looked in November? Federer dominated his last three matches at the Masters Cup and Djokovic ended the year with five consecutive losses and seemed destined for a slump in 2008. A little more than three months later, Djokovic is the Australian Open champion.

Last year, began with TGF [THE GREAT FEDERER] being beaten twice by Canas.

TGF lost his first match at Indian Wells, in the second round, after winning it the previous three seasons. He stands to gain a lot of ranking points if he does well this year.

TGF could gain a few more in Miami, where he lost in the fourth round. If he wins both tournaments and performs well at Estoril, Portugal, where he didn’t play last year, he’ll have a cushion over Nadal in the rankings that the Spaniard won’t be able to top without a TGF flop at Roland Garros or Wimbledon, or a sensational hard court season from Nadal (which has yet to happen). Djokovic has a lot of points to defend in coming weeks, too, and he’s still 1,300 points behind TGF.

Remember - -  it’s only March.