What is this, an edition of Masterpiece Theater? I half expect Rafa to light a pipe, open up one of those oversized, leather-bound Dickens books and begin doing a John Houseman impersonation.

Thank goodness the ATP World Tour Finals begin tomorrow. I don't know how many more of these ridiculous photo ops I could take. (I'm lying, I love these things. How much resentment was there in the room when the photographers say Federer and Nadal in those chairs? And look at del Potro. For as effortless as he and Federer look on the tennis court, they sure seem to be aware of what their hands are doing in this picture. Relax, guys.)

Martin Rogers previews the tournament, which begins tomorrow, in Busted Racquet's Weekly Slice and predicts a Federer victory. That would make Roger just the second man in history to finish the year at No. 1 after losing the ranking during that same year. (Ivan Lendl was the other.) My money is on Andy Murray, who will have the home-court advantage without the pressure that usually accompanies it at Wimbledon. 

First serve
London is gearing up for the final showdown of the ATP season, and all the talk is about the battle for top spot. Even the inclusion of British favorite Andy Murray in the eight-man field for the ATP World Tour Finals can't distract from the fight for the No.1 ranking that will be played out between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

Despite being injured for much of the summer and missing Wimbledon, Nadal still has the opportunity to finish the year ahead of the pack by winning the tournament and hoping Federer slips up. Yet as 2009 draws to a close in men's tennis, it is impossible to shake the sense that this year has merely been the appetizer for what could be a spectacular 2010.

Coming into this season, we all eagerly anticipated that the Federer-Nadal rivalry would heat up further, especially with Federer's mononucleosis condition controlled and overcome. However, Nadal's knee problems prevented them from meeting at the French Open and kept the Spaniard out until his return just before the U.S. Open, when he was still way short of full fitness.

If both the big guns can go into the new campaign at their peak, it will pave the way for a superb year.

Also working his way in the mix is Novak Djokovic, who finally seems to have his motivation levels right and at last is poised to challenge the top two on a regular basis. Murray will look to improve on his disappointing performances at the major championships, and Juan Martin del Potro also has the ability to grow upon his U.S. Open triumph.

If all these stars are fit and healthy, then they will push Federer and Nadal to even greater achievements and allow one of modern sport's most intriguing head-to-head matchups to flourish.

Drop shot
Andre Agassi has received confirmation that he will not be censured for his admitted use of crystal meth during his playing career. ATP president Adam Helfant revealed that his organization is powerless to punish Agassi retroactively as he is no longer playing. Instead, he is free to make extra money from the revelations in his autobiography "Open," effectively being rewarded for the lies he told to cover up his drug use in the late 1990s.

Clean winner
The USTA's annual participation survey showed surprisingly buoyant results, revealing more than 30 million active players now in the United States. The figures were up 12 percent from 2008 and also showed increased numbers across all minority groups.

Use your frequent flyer miles
It is a good time of year to be in London. Christmas songs are already blaring from every radio station, and Oxford Street is a great place to snap up some festive gifts. Then there is the small matter of the ATP World Tour Finals, where Federer and Nadal slug it out for the top ranking while Andy Murray tries to please his home crowd.

This week's predictions
ATP World Tour Finals (singles): Roger Federer
ATP World Tour Finals (doubles): Daniel Nestor/Nenad Zimonjic

Game Point is Busted Racquet's roundup of facts, figures and links about the tennis world.

Love -- The picture of the eight participants in the ATP finale isn't nearly as fun as the picture of the eight participants in the WTA finale. It looks like they're having a contest to see who can look the most uncomfortable in a suit. Congratulations, Juan Martin del Potro (second from left). You win.

15 -- The draw for the round-robin stage of the tournament were released Wednesday. Group A: Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Juan Martin del Potro, Fernando Verdasco. Group B: Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Nikolay Davydenko, Robin Soderling. That first group is killer. Maybe that's why del Potro looks so solemn.

30 -- The New York Times Web site features video of an interview with Andre Agassi. Compared to all the other interviews Agassi has given over the past month, it's pretty tame, but kudos to Sam Tanenhaus for asking about the ghostwriter of "Open", J.R. Moehringer. Most of the plaudits for Agassi's autobiography have failed to mention the man who crafted the story.

40 -- Best tennis headline of the week: "Querrey still recovering from one night in Bangkok". 

Game -- Roger Federer thinks his pal Thierry Henry shouldn't be vilified for his handball during France's World Cup qualifying win over Ireland. He also believes replay should be used in soccer. Because, as we all know, Roger Federer loves the use of replay in tennis.

Tennis, everyone?

A study commissioned by the USTA found that 30.1 million Americans laced up their tennis shoes and hit the court in 2009. That's a 12.5 percent increase from 2008 and almost 25 percent more than in 2003, back when Roger Federer was just that guy with the ponytail.

The survey showed participation grew in all age groups under 50 and within all ethnic groups. The biggest increases were among Hispanics, with 32 percent more playing the game. Blacks had a 19 percent increase.

There were 7.1 million newcomers to the sport, a 19.5 percent increase from last year. Regular players, those playing between four and 20 times a year, increased 26 percent this year to 14.8 million.

Looks like McDonald's isn't the only thing that can thrive during a recession. Because though the USTA didn't give any reasons why the game's popularity is rising, it's logical to assume it has something to do with the economic downturn. Springing for a can of Penns and dusting off the ol' racquet is a lot more affordable than plunking down $85 for greens fees or $50 for a lift ticket.

Popularity in professional tennis is rising too. Ratings for Wimbledon, which rapidly declined during this decade, have surged in the past three years. The U.S. Open also did impressive numbers this year, thanks to the successes of Melanie Oudin and the switch from USA to ESPN2.

One if by land, deuce if by sea?

To avoid car traffic in downtown London, players at next week's year-end ATP World Tour Finals will have the option of traveling to the site of the tournament by boat. At last year's event, which was held in Shanghai, players complained about how long it took them to travel to the courts.

This year's tournament is being billed as the largest indoor tennis event of all-time, with 255,000 tickets being sold already. It will be held at the O2 Arena, where Michael Jackson was supposed to play his 50-show comeback tour.

The building is located in the eastern part of London on the banks of the Thames, but the players' hotel is in the central part of the city and driving times because of traffic would be too unpredictable, organizers say. (I mean, we all know what those traffic circles are like in London.)

Players will have the option of getting chauffeured by car to the tournament, but the managing director of the event says that "they'll soon realize the boat is the best way to go." There will be two 62-seat boats in use. The door-to-door trip will take approximately 30 minutes. No word on whether this song will be pumped through the speakers. If not, I'm sure Federer has it on his iPod.

It must be a scary thought to the other players on the ATP Tour that Roger Federer thinks he's only "midway" through his career. In an interview with Londay's Sunday Times, Federer said that he plans to play past the 2012 Olympics and hopes to extend his playing days long enough so that his infant twin daughters can see him play.

"I'm midway [through my career]. It feels like the second part of my career right now, although I am trying to avoid saying that because the second part sounds like ‘neehhhhrrrrr' [motions straight down]. You can definitely play your greatest tennis until 32 or 33, it's just a matter of how you look at it. I've always been a big believer in looking at the big picture. It's not about, ‘What will we do tomorrow?', it's about, ‘How will my life and tennis look in the next five years?' And I still have the same vision, so that's going to help me."

Federer turned 28 in August so, by his math, he could still be on top of his game through 2014. With 15 Grand Slams already to his credit, could his unspoken goal to top Steffi Graf's all-time modern record of 22 Slams? Graf (whom I now want to call "Stefanie" after reading Andre Agassi's autobiography) had a prime that lasted nine years, but she started winning Slams much earlier in her life than Federer did. For Federer to reach her, he'd probably need to win six of the next 12 and then hope to win another one or two in the twilight of his career.

It sounds daunting, but are you going to put anything past Federer? His last two years at the Slams have been considered disappointments, yet he's still won three of eight.

Like his buddy Tiger Woods, Federer's unprecedented string of success set such unrealistic expectations that mere greatness seems ordinary. When Tiger goes a year without winning a major (like he did in 2009), people ask if his season was a failure. Federer won two this year, but he loses to Del Potro at the U.S. Open and it causes buzzing that his game is on the decline. Can't a guy lose a match every now and then?

Go read the whole interview, it's quite interesting. In it, Federer discusses his love of tennis, why he's friendly with his biggest rival, the crying incident at The Australian Open and that time he smoked meth. Wait, sorry. Scratch that last one, I'm still in Agassi mode. 

Game Point is Busted Racquet's roundup of facts, figures and links about the tennis world.

Love -- The Daily Mail reports 10 ATP matches from 2009 are under investigation by the Tennis Integrity Unity because of suspect betting patterns. The specific matches (all first-rounders) are not revealed, but no major player is said to be involved. Most of the games under investigation involved big wagers on a weaker player or mid-match bets on players who are down.

15 -- Rafael Nadal did a favor for a fellow Spainiard today. His defeat of Jo-Wilifried Tsonga in the quarterfinals of the Paris Masters gave Fernando Verdasco the final spot in the eight-man ATP World Tour Championships, to be played later this month in London. Tsonga and Robin Soderling had been fighting for the eighth and final spot in the year-end tournament. The competitors: Roger Federer,  Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Juan Martin del Potro, Andy Roddick, Nikolay Davydenko and Verdasco.

30 -- Just like it was in the final WTA tournament of the year, the No. 1 ranking will be up grabs in the final ATP tournament of the year. A win by Nadal in Paris would put him only 305 points behind Federer for the No. 1 ranking.

40 -- John Newcombe's mustache, just because.

Game -- The tennis career of Marat Safin ended Wednesday with a loss in Paris to U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro. Safin is known best for his temper, carousing, outspokeness and, above all, his underachieving, but the bluster obscures the fact that Safin was pretty damn good, winning two Grand Slams and ascending to No. 1 in 2000. Sure he could have done more, but unlike others who say they have no regrets about unfulfilled promise; when Marat Safin says it, I believe him. 

Andre Agassi's mullet has officially been put out to pasture. Appearing earlier this week on The Late Show with David Letterman, Agassi gave away his famed mullet-weave (or a close approximation) to an audience member:

Much like Busted Racquet, Letterman found Agassi's selection in fake hair to be as surprising as his drug use. But Agassi got in the line of the evening when, while discussing how he used his hair to help him hide his true identity (a constant theme throughout his book), he said, "what better way to hide yourself than wearing a mullet?"

That should be on a fortune cookie.

Yesterday, we broke down Andre Agassi's interview with Katie Couric, which aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes. CBS had been promoting the interview incessantly, promising reaction from Agassi about the revelations in his autobiography "Open" about his use of crystal meth.

But, according to the New York Times, despite having worked for weeks on the Agassi story, Couric didn't ask the eight-time Grand Slam champion about his drug use during their original interview. It was only after the story broke and became the biggest news in sports that Couric and her producers thought to question Agassi about it, which they did after flying back out to Las Vegas for a follow-up.

Tim Arango writes in Monday's editions:

Katie Couric of CBS News had been working for weeks on a piece about Mr. Agassi for "60 Minutes," which was scheduled to be shown Sunday night. Ms. Couric and her producers had access to the book and had been in Las Vegas interviewing Mr. Agassi. Apparently, neither Ms. Couric nor her producers decided to ask Mr. Agassi directly about the crystal meth use, although he brought up drug use in general when discussing his depression.

But once the news broke, and the media storm ensued, Ms. Couric went back to Las Vegas on Tuesday to ask Mr. Agassi about it and his take on the public's reaction.

Decisions are a lot easier to make in retrospect, but this one shouldn't have needed to be. Even though Couric and her team interviewed Agassi before the uproar over his drug use began, it should have been completely obvious that the most newsworthy part of his book was the section about the drug use and the subsequent lying to tennis authorities about the failed drug test. 

If you thought the interview was a softball before (as we did), then it becomes slo-pitch softball after this report. Not asking Agassi about the meth would be like interviewing Michael Vick and not asking him about dogfighting. The anchor of a network news program and a team of producers on the most legendary investigative news program in television history shouldn't need to wait for a story to break to know what the story is. 

One of the greatest public relations blitzes in recent times continued last night when Katie Couric's interview with Andre Agassi aired on "60 Minutes," hours before the eight-time Grand Slam champion's book "Open" was set to hit stores. You can watch the interview at the "60 Minutes" web site.

Here are the five most interesting tidbits:

1. It was a softball interview from Couric, which was probably the whole point in Agassi's people getting her to do the piece in the first place. She didn't press Agassi when he said he couldn't remember how often he used meth (nobody expects him to give an exact number, but she could have asked whether he used every day, twice a day, every weekend, etc.) and let him skate on the lies he told to the ATP about the positive drug test.

2. As we detailed in last Wednesday's edition of Game Point, Agassi's mullet was actually a weave. In the 1990 French Open final in which he had to use bobby pins to keep the piece on, Agassi said he considered his loss a victory because his hair didn't fall off on the court. We also learned that Agassi's hair began falling out when he was 17.

3. Watching video of shirtless Nick Bollettieri intensely watching shirtless Agassi hit balls is the second most hilarious thing in this interview. The first? Jorts.

4. There have been questions about whether Agassi is sincere about owning up to his mistakes or whether his admissions were done because they added some dollars onto his book deal. I've written that I think Agassi's story and remorse are genuine and his response to Couric reading the critical statements of Martina Navratilova only advances this line of thinking. Agassi said:

"That's what you dont wanna hear. When somebody takes a performance inhibitor, a recreational drug, the one thing would is, not that there aren't rules that need to be followed, but along with that would come some compassion ... that maybe this person doesn't need condemnation. Maybe this person could stand a little help. And I had a problem. And there might be many other athletes out there that test positive for recreational drugs that has a problem. So i would ask for some compassion."

5. Watching all of the clips of Agassi winning majors, I have to believe that even though Agassi says he hated tennis, he loved to win tennis tournaments. The joy on his face after the victory at Wimbledon in '92 or at the U.S. Open in '94 is not the look of a man who hates what he's doing. 

Busted Racquet will post its review of "Open" later this week.