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The Roland-Garros museum Tenniseum was commissioned by the FFT in order to raise public awareness of tennis and its cultural heritage in France . Unveiled in May 2003, tennis very first multimedia museum presents: two exhibitions: “The complete history of tennis” and “25 ans d’art contemporain,” 400 hours of archive films, and 3,000 printed documents.

Behind the scenes at Roland-Garros: Whether you are a tennis fanatic or just a bit curious, you can take a peek behind the scenes at the French Open courtesy of guided visits, which include commentary and countless anecdotes from highly informed professional guides.

The agenda includes: the history of the stadium, the saga of the Four Musketeers and other great champions, Suzanne Lenglen, the original darling of French tennis, the media centre, the players area, the changing room, the Philippe-Chatrier court.

“Terre de Roland-Garros!” also includes

The Maison du Tennis: the FFTs reception and information centre.

The Roland-Garros Boutique : with its fashion collections and accessories for men, women and children.

The Clinique de la raquette: get your rackets strung by the professionals.

The “Le Roland-Garros” restaurant : a refined rendezvous at the heart of clay court paradise.

Access to Roland-Garros World! is free and unlimited, so at any time during opening hours, visitors can check out the Pavillon de la Griffe, the Tenniseum reception, the Maison du Tennis, or the Place des Mousquetaires, and can even take in the famous Philippe-Chatrier court.

Free access “ consult the opening times
Stade Roland-Garros, Porte des Mousquetaires, 2 avenue Gordon-Bennett, 75016 PARIS – Tel: +33 1 47 43 48 00

English Website at: http://www.fft.fr/rolandgarros/en/Frame_terre.html
French Website at: http://www.fft.fr/tenniseum/tenniseumMusee.html

The 19-year-old had originally replaced Lindsay Davenport, who is injured and has also pulled out of the French Open.

Sharapova, who won the Indian Wells tournament earlier this year, was unable to play in the WTA tournament in Rome this week because of the injury.

The 2004 Wimbledon champion also has an ingrowing toenail.

The $200,000 event will still include some of the best WTA Tour talent in the world. Below are the players in this year’s event listed by country and world ranking. To contact Dr. Murray on his mobile phone in Turkey, please call 90-5435892311 or send an email to: johnfmurray@mindspring.com.

Here are the players in this year’s Istanbul Cup:

ANASTASIA MYSKINA (RUS) 13
ANNA-LENA GROENFELD (GER) 15
ANNA CHAKVEDATZE (RUS) 34
SHAHAR PEER (ISR) 35
SANIA MIRZA (IND) 37
MARA SANTANGELO (ITA) 41
JELENA KOSTANIC (CRO) 43
CATALINA CASTANO (COL) 48
MICHAELLA KRAJICEK (NED) 55
ELENI DANIILIDOU (GRE) 61
MARIA ELENA CAMERIN (ITA) 62
TSVETANA PIRONKOVA (BUL) 70
MARIANA DIAZ-OLIVIA (ARG) 73
MEGHANN SHAUGNESSY (USA) 76
ASHLEY HARKLEROAD (USA) 79
ALONA BONDARENKO (UKR) 80
JAMEA JACKSON (USA) 83
ANASTASIYA YAKIMOVA (BLR) 84
MASHONA WASHIGTON (USA) 85
KAROLINA SPREM (CRO) 90
MELINDA CZINK (HUN) 99
EMMANUELLE GAGLIARDI (SUI) 101

Tap tap. Tap tap.

Check the helmet again. Maniacally adjust, readjust and re-readjust the batting gloves. Take a couple of practice swings.

Step into the batters box, ready for the pitch.

Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Nomar Garciaparra goes through much of that routine in and around the batter’s box before each pitch. He and other hitters say such rhythms are essential parts of the process of trying to get a hit.

Others call it annoying shenanigans and grandstanding.

Sometimes, I think its overboard, Colo- rado Rockies reliever Ray King said, referring to Garciaparra, who will be in Denver for a three-game series against the Rockies starting tonight. tapping his shoe, loosening his wristbands. You need more TV time? Become a pitcher.

œI think some of them do it for the attention. You know, the game is televised, or he’s got his buddy in the stands. Theyre stepping in and stepping out, and Im like, ‘lets gooooo.

The routine is a normal part of life according to Garciaparra, who cares little about a pitcher’s gripes. Some people wash their face then brush their teeth. Some brush their teeth first.

“It’s more to get yourself focused than anything, Garciaparra said. You can ask anybody if they take the same way to work every day. Or, if theres going to be a big day, do they put on a certain shirt? Or if theyre going for a job interview, do they wear a certain thing? People do it in all walks of life.

“Some people, if they dont have the cup of coffee in the morning, they dont feel right. Its part of what we do. Part of what we are. Its part of human nature.

Garciaparra is no Mike “The Human Rain Delay Hargrove, known in baseball circles as having the most irritatingly long batters box routine. Hargrove finished his 12-season career in 1985. Garciaparra is the current leader in the race to take Hargrove’s crown.

Rockies infielder Jamey Carroll doesnt remember when his routine started. Carroll has been doing it so long he considers it more of a habit than a special routine.

Routines can be broken. Habits are hard to break. Carroll has to do it, or the at-bat doesn’t feel right.

“What I do is clean out the box, Carroll said. I dig my spot with the right foot. Then wipe it with the left.

Carroll said the wipe with the left foot completes a cross in the dirt to symbolize Jesus and what is most important to him.

“I look down and get the sign, he said of the next part in his routine, referring to the third base coach. “I step back in, and I hit the corner of the plate one time. And there we go.

John F. Murray, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based sports psychologist, said routines are important because the management of downtime matters.

The actual time a batter performs an action is short. Like a golfer, the batters only action happens during the swing. Everything else is downtime � the moments before that first pitch, the moments between pitches.

“Because the situation is so important, we do things to become more patterned and consistent, Murray said he routine is supposed to have the effect of preparing the person for that moment in a consistent manner, such that in possible moments of stress, anxiety, anger, over-excitement, that we have something to fall back on to put us into a rhythm. . . . It has to be consistent. You dont want to rush it, and you dont want to change (the routine) once you have a good one.

Garciaparra, 32, has played 11 seasons and is a career .320 hitter.

Major League Baseball has tried to shorten games, some of which last four hours. Batters often blame pitchers. Pitchers blame the batters who have found that one good routine, as Murray suggests.

Dodgers pitcher Eric Gagne, who faced Garciaparra when he played for the Cubs, called Garciaparra’s routine a little weird. But the routine, Gagne said, isnt as bad as other batters.

“He does a lot of stuff, but he doesnt slow down the game, Gagne said. There are some guys who go and just take their sweet time. If you dont slow down the game, it doesnt matter what you do.

“Sometimes there are guys who just wont step in the box. Either theyre not mentally ready or they havent done their routine all over again.

St. Louis Cardinals outfielder John Rodriguez hasn’t completed a full season in the majors, yet his batters box routine already irritates many.

Houston Astros manager Phil Garner shook his head and rolled his eyes as he specifically pointed to Rodriguez digging a toe hold, stepping out of the box, taking swings, then taking time to get back in the box.

Then he steps in, steps back, wiggles, does all this, and its just like, ËœKid, get in the box, King said, getting more exasperated the more he talked about Rodriguez. When youve been in this league 10, 12 years, then you can do all that.

If a batter takes too long to get in the box, the umpire can signal the pitcher to throw anyway.

“The league is always trying to speed up the game, and they rush the pitchers, King said. “But some of these hitters, they need to rush them. Step in, step out, check the bat 20 times. . Lets go. Either youre going to hit the ball or youre not going to hit the ball.

Astros second baseman Craig Biggio uses that mentality. Biggio, 40, is a seven-time All-Star who said he doesnt have a set routine.

Biggio, like most batters, simply wants to be comfortable at the plate. Time is Biggis only constant.

Look, I dont want to stand up there too long, Biggio said. i want to get up there and go.

Batters such as Biggio like that rhythm. If, however, a batter is hitting well, a pitcher may take a little more time to disrupt that rhythm.

Batters think the same way. They dont want pitchers, who are in a groove, to maintain that comfort zone. Some batters box routines might be lengthened simply to irritate a pitcher such as King.Å“You dont want him up there just throwing away,current Astros and former Rockies center fielder Preston Wilson said. So, there is a little cat and mouse game going on.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Psychic Uri Geller and two partners have bought the Tennessee house Elvis Presley lived in before moving to Graceland, with a winning bid of $905,100 on eBay, he said on Monday.

“We are unbelievably pleased. This is a piece of history,” Geller said by phone from England.

“We intend to restore it to its old glory. We would like to bring sick children there (for tours), Palestinian children, Israeli children, American children,” the Israeli-born Geller said. “Hopefully one day we might get approval to turn it into a museum.”

Presley bought the four-bedroom, two-bath house at 1034 Audubon Drive in Memphis in 1956 with a down payment of $500. He lived there for 13 months before moving to Graceland, the now-famous Memphis estate where he died in 1977.

During his time in the white, ranch-style house with an outdoor swimming pool, Presley’s career took off with hits such as “All Shook Up” and “Don’t be cruel.”

Geller identified the sellers as Mike and Cindy Hazen, who bought the house some years ago, though not from Presley, for about $180,000.

Geller had original bid $300,000 last month but a bidding war ensued and the price ballooned, he said. During the process he was approached by dozens of people wanting to go in with him, he said. He chose two, New York lawyer Jim Gleason and Lisbeth Silvandersson, a Swedish-born jewelry maker who lives in England, as equal partners.

He had set a ceiling price of $1.11 million, said Geller, who acknowledges a paranormal fascination with the number 11.

“As the clock closed on the bidding Sunday,” Geller said, “I felt intuitively I got the price. I was text messaging Gleason and it was exactly 11 on my mobile phone and suddenly the radio started playing an Elvis song. That was Elvis telling me we got the house!”

Geller met Presley in Las Vegas in the 1970s after the “King of Rock and Roll” asked him to perform his “spoon bending” trick for him, he said. Since then he has amassed a large collection of Presley memorabilia, he said.

The Scotsman – Eben Harrell – The legendary Wimbledon referee Alan Mills has hit out at Andy Murray’s on-court behaviour, saying the Scot’s fiery temper is the main obstacle to him winning at the All England Club.

Mr Mills, who retired after 23 years as Wimbledon tournament referee last year, told The Scotsman he has “serious concerns” over Murray’s recent on-court behaviour.

Experience with top tennis champions such as the placid Pete Sampras and Roger Federer has convinced him that Murray cannot succeed unless he brings his temper under control.

Even the tumultuous John McEnroe, with whom the referee had many encounters at Wimbledon, played his best tennis when his emotions were in check, Mr Mills said.

Last month, Murray received Britain’s first fine in the 106-year history of the Davis Cup after swearing at a match official.

That fine followed a code violation issued to Murray at a pro tournament in San Jose in February, after Murray threw his racket four times and appeared to swear at a chair umpire.

Mr Mills said: “Things like that are very foolish. If you can’t control yourself that’s not going to be very good for you in the future. It’s one of two questions in his game.

“The first is his fitness and the second is his ability to keep his emotions under control”.

“I always go back to [Bjorn] Borg. He was always known as the Ice Man. But what most people don’t know is that at the age of 15 he behaved so badly at a tournament that the Swedish Tennis Association suspended him for six months. Soon after he learned his lesson and went on to be a great champion.

“It would be very difficult for someone to suspend [Murray] in this day and age. [But] if he imagined that it could happen he would have shaped up.”

After his Davis Cup fine, Murray justified his behaviour by arguing that footballers swear on the pitch without being reprimanded.

Mr Mills, himself a former Davis Cup player, said: “A certain amount of aggression is good. When I first saw him play, I thought, ‘At last, here was a British player who looks as though he wants it. He’s hungry. You can tell by the way he plays.

“You are always going to have things that happen on a tennis court that are going to upset you and there are ways of dealing with it without losing control.”

Mr Mills, 70, who is in Edinburgh this week refereeing the Scottish Open, also questioned Murray’s decision to fire coach Mark Petchy last month.

A spokesman for Murray could not be reached last night, but Jeremy Bates, the former British number one and current Davis Cup captain, said: “[Murray's temper] is part and parcel of what makes him a good player. He is channelling it in the right direction – it’s what is going to make him such a champion.”

In every basketball gymnasium and on every playground there’s one fundamental distance that denies no one — 15 feet of universal freedom. The concept of a free throw is a beautiful thing.

Not everyone can dunk a basketball, but everyone, from the guy at the local arcade Pop-a-Shot to the kid at the county fair, can shoot a free throw. And in a league where men insult gravity and unnatural athleticism abounds, a free throw is the National Basketball Association’s great everyman equalizer.

So if a free throw is so simple, then why do some of the world’s best athletes make it look so foul?

There’s no defender. It’s a stationary target. The distance never changes. Jumping isn’t involved. Noth-ing is clearer than the clarity of the charity. Sure, there’s noise and waving hands and wiggling balloons, but try telling that to the bolt riveter whose office is a two-foot-wide beam at the top of a skyscraper, or the guy investing retirement funds in the trading pit.

`NOBODY’S PERFECT’

Shaquille O’Neal, the Miami Heat’s center, is not a good free-throw shooter. He’s not even average and only slightly better than wretched. O’Neal shot 40.5 percent from the line in the Heat’s first-round playoff series against the Chicago Bulls, a series the Heat won 4-2.

O’Neal started strong from the line — 5 of 8 in Game 1 and 6 of 7 in Game 2 — but has since regressed to historic doldrums — even for O’Neal.

He missed seven consecutive free throws spanning two games and then went 2 of 12 in Game 5 and 4 of 8 in Game 6. That’s 40.5 percent for the Bulls series. Drop-kicking might be nearly as effective. He fared a little better Monday night in Game 1 versus the Nets, going 8 of 14.

O’Neal came to terms with his free-throw struggles long ago.

”Me having a beautiful wife and great family and friends . . . all the money I’ve got . . . a Ferrari . . . the rings I got, the two mansions on the water, a master’s in criminal justice, I’m a cop, plus I look good. So me shooting 40 percent at the foul line is just God’s way of saying nobody’s perfect. If I shoot 90 percent from the line, it just wouldn’t be right. I’d shoot zero percent before I’d shoot underhanded,” O’Neal said in the July 2005 issue of Esquire.

Hall of Famer Rick Barry shot free throws underhand. Barry, who played his college ball at the University of Miami, is the only person to lead the NCAA, the NBA and the American Basketball Association in scoring. He shot his free throws granny-style at a career clip of 89 percent.

”It seems rather ludicrous that people can’t shoot 80 percent,” Barry said. “You’re not a good free-throw shooter if you don’t shoot 80 percent. It’s the same ball, the same basket, the same distance. It’s ridiculous.”

Barry attacks the topic of free throws with the same aggressive flair that made him a Hall of Famer. He led the ABA in free-throw percentage three out of the four years he played in the league. He was the NBA’s most accurate free-throw shooter five times and ranks second on the NBA’s all-time free-throw percentage list (90 percent) behind Mark Price (90.4 percent). So, Barry knows his free throws.

”There’s no art to the free throw,” Barry said. “You’re just doing something fundamental. It’s a repetitive motion. The astonishing thing to me is to see these people who don’t have a routine.”

Barry’s underhand routine: “Three bounces, hands on the ball at the same time, relax and take a breath and shoot the shot. Every time. It enables you to not think about winning or losing the game. The focus is on the routine and not the enormity of the situation.”

If there is an art to the free throw — Barry said there isn’t, but then proceeded to describe a Rembrandt — then O’Neal expresses himself with a child’s broken crayons: colorful, erratic and outside the lines.

O’Neal is a future Hall of Famer. He has won three NBA championships and is striving for a fourth. He is an unstoppable force and an athletic icon unparalleled in all of sports. He knows this. He calls himself ”Superman.” But even Superman has a weakness. Put O’Neal at the free-throw line and watch a seven-foot-one, 325-pound basketball superhero heave line-drive darts of kryptonite like a mere mortal.

`HACK-A-SHAQ’

Opponents can’t stop O’Neal, so they foul him with the sole purpose of sending him to the free-throw line. This strategy — ”Hack-a-Shaq” — is no secret. O’Neal’s career regular-season free-throw average stands at about 53 percent. Come playoff time, it’s even worse — 51 percent.

After the 2000 season, Barry approached O’Neal during the Summer Olympics with the hope of teaching O’Neal how to shoot underhand free throws.

”He was actually ready to do it . . . but the Lakers didn’t want to hire me at that time,” Barry said. “[O'Neal] could have been a definite go-to guy instead of a guy coaches take out because they don’t want people fouling him.”

Barry spoke with O’Neal again a few years later with the same proposal, but O’Neal declined.

”[O'Neal] said he was a hip-hop kind of guy and it wouldn’t be good for his image,” Barry said.

It’s no surprise that O’Neal balked on shooting free throws underhand. Barry, too, was skeptical of the idea when his father, Rick Barry Jr., first approached him with the idea. Rick Barry Jr. played semipro ball and shot his free throws underhand.

”He kept bugging me so I went out with him one day and did it, really, to get him off my back,” said Barry, who said he made the switch in high school. ‘But I said, `This is pretty good.’ I kept working on it and wish I had made the changes earlier.”

Barry says Ben Wallace is another candidate for shooting free throws underhand.

Wallace, the All-Star center for the defending Eastern Conference champion Detroit Pistons, is one of the NBA’s most athletic players. He jumps high, runs fast and bulges with muscles. A four-time winner of the Defensive Player of the Year Award, Wallace is an intimidating presence under the basket, but at the free-throw line his athletic hands morph into a pair of skillets. He’s a career 42 percent shooter at the line.

AT A DISADVANTAGE

There has been supposition that taller players such as O’Neal and Wallace are at a free-throw disadvantage. Their height puts them closer than other players to the height of the basket and therefore they tend to not put enough arc on the ball.

Barry once helped a teammate, George Johnson of the Golden State Warriors, improve his free-throw percentage by nearly 20 percentage points by having him shoot underhand. ”That’s a pretty good indication that it works,” Barry said.

Dr. John F. Murray, a sports psychologist in Palm Beach County, makes a living out of helping professional athletes perform under intense pressure, and free throws offer that pressure.

”When you’re talking about performance failure, it often does fall into fear or the feeling of threat,” Murray said.

“Very few people can compete well in those situations. I say don’t create the fear yourself.”

It’s quite simple, really. Just always remember that somewhere in Freeport, Maine, there’s a lumpy couch potato sitting on the 100percent-free-throw-shooter side of the TV screen, screaming, “My grandmother can make a free throw.”

It’s a beautiful thing.

That would at least explain his inexplicable struggles clearing it. A couple of times, he clipped it with his left leg so forcefully that he tumbled over in a frustrated and red-faced heap.

“It became like a mental barrier and I’d almost balk at it,” said Wood, 22, a sophomore.

He had to change something, do something. So one day, as he walked back toward the starting blocks after his warmup, he put two fingers to his lips and ever-so discreetly planted them on that particularly irksome obstacle.

Moments later, he smoothly soared over the hurdle. And ever since, Wood, the ACC’s 400-meter hurdle champion in 2005 who is ranked sixth nationally in the event, has paused by that first hurdle to give it a kiss.

“I know it kind of sounds silly,” he said, “but it calms me down.”

Even though it’s pure superstition.

But don’t knock Wood. He has lots of superstitious company at FSU, as he would at any sandlot or school yard or big-league ballpark, where athletes of all sports and all talent levels adopt rituals that might seem irrational or inane.

“At some point, we’re all big kids and we like to have a bedtime story, we like to have something to hold onto that we think will help us play better the next day,” said Dr. John Murray, a noted sports psychologist. “We like something to fall back on that’s comfortable and simple.”

Ytai Abougzir, 23, a star junior on FSU’s NCAA Region-bound tennis team, doesn’t deviate in the way he stretches before matches, and sticks with the same warmup partner.

“I try to keep my routine the same so I don’t have anything else in my head,” he said.

Murray, who has worked with NFL players and top college athletes, said being consistent and systematic in “pre-performance routines” tend to pay off with successful results. But it’s a fine line, he said, between that and attributing a strong showing to something “irrational” such as how one ties his or her shoes.

“In the old days, if it rained, we said the gods were mad at us,” he said. “We fill in those blanks. … The line could be very fuzzy for athletes, indeed.”

Crossing the line? Not Abougzir.

Touching them is another matter.

Ever since he was 12 and enjoyed some success, he realized he was touching the chalk lines on only one side of the court. That footwork became part of his game.

“If I touch the wrong line,” he said, “I’ll freak out a little bit and I’ll try to fix it.”

FSU junior tennis standout Nicola Slater has a thing about being the first one to touch a newly strung racket, and keeping a new wrapper on the racket’s grip until the last minute before she uses it.

When someone suggested she was obsessive compulsive, she took a moment to reflect.

“Oh wow. Maybe I am,” she admitted.

In her mind, there are some things she does to maintain a regimen and others that are pure superstition. As a teenager, she wouldn’t shave her legs as long as she was winning in a tournament. But she didn’t like the look and after recognizing that she also suffered some tough losses, she sought out the razor as she normally had.

“I realized that wasn’t for me,” she said with a laugh.

But these days, she will wear the same outfit if she won in it the previous match. If she wins a critical point, she’ll insist on getting the same ball for the next big one.

“You just try it out because at that point, something’s got to happen, something’s got to work or go in your favor,” said Slater, 21. “You think, “Maybe this will work. Maybe it’s the same ball or touching the line with your racket.’ ”

Athletes usually exude a supreme, unwavering confidence in their ability to make a shot or sink a putt or clear a hurdle, so it may seem incongruous that they would credit a superstition for achieving it. Murray, however, said it actually makes perfect sense.

“We see these guys on TV, we’re talking about a lottery winner,” he said of how rare an athlete’s gifts are compared to the population. “Who the heck can play baseball? Only the top 1,000 guys out there. That’s a hugely bizarre occurrence and to become bizarre, you have do things in an extreme fashion and that lends itself to being superstitious.”

Triple jumper Rafeeq Curry started wearing a black headband, a gift from his brother, in high school. He forgot it before a meet a few years ago at FSU and a teammate rustled up a garnet one for him.

“I PR’d (set a personal record) and ever since then, I’ve been wearing that one,” said Curry, 22, a senior, a three-time All-American outdoors who’s ranked No. 1 nationally in the triple jump and fifth in the long jump.

Not just in meets. He rarely takes it off for photographs. He’s one of eight Seminoles on the cover of the 2006 team media guide and the only one with a headband.

“It’s grown attached to me,” he said with a laugh. “If I don’t wear it, I just feel naked without it. If you compete in something and do well, you want to wear the same shoes, the same uniform again.”

If you think it works, you don’t question it and stick with it.

‘Cause superstition is the way.