tennis trophies – what henin should have hoisted

I really thought the trophy for this week’s Dubai Duty Free Open would look something like this:

taken from Burj Al Arab‘s website

Instead, it took a more traditional route. I’m showing it to you after the cut. Ok let’s get started: this week’s trophies came from tournaments in Memphis, Rotterdam, and Buenos Aires for the men, and in Memphis, Bogota, and Dubai for the women. Nothing notable to point out, save for the Dubai trophy. For all the craziness that pours out of that emirate, you’d think they could have made a cool looking trophy. Justine beat Amelie in two sets, putting their career head-to-head at 7-6. Here’s the trophy:

I don’t know what that is. I’m e-mailing the tournament organizers tomorrow, and hopefully they can shed more light on the trophy’s background. Here’s a better look of it with doubles winners Huber and Black:

and the runner-ups got this:

Onto Memphis, where Venus Williams won her first title since Wimbledon 2005 (and time in a competitive court since last October because of a nagging left wrist injury), and is now trying to get to the top 16 by the time Roland Garros rolls around:

And over in Rotterdam, a fresh Justin Timberlake Mikhail Youzhny won 2 and 4 against Ivan Ljubicic, who was worn down after his three-hour semifinal match against Davydenko: “I was so tired after the semi-final. Playing three hours against Davydenko is like six hours against any other player.” (from Yahoo! Tennis) Mikhail also had the advantage of sitting out the first round of the Davis Cup tie.

I’ve filed his salute along with Paradorn’s bow and Agassi’s four-corner bow as one of the more memorable acknowledgement-of-win gestures in the ATP tour.

More blah comes out of the clay courts in South America, where Monaco beat di Mauro at the Telmex Cup in Buenos Aires:

and Roberta Vinci won at Copa Colsanitas in Bogota:

Juan Monaco squeezed in a few photo opps with the Rio de Plata Cup. His trophy should have looked like a miniature version of it:

And finally, Tommy Haas beat Andy Roddick in Memphis to claim the 2007 Regions Morgan Keegan Championships Trophy, which very ornate but also very ho-hum:

and I haven’t forgiven him for speaking out against equal pay at Wimbledon.