A fine day for sports

Congratulations to Mike Weir and David Nalbandian for their victories on Sunday.

As a Canadian, I was very happy to see Weir win another golf tournament. He hadn't won one since 2004, so it had been a while. But after playing well in The President's Cup earlier this month, he added a few more tournaments to his schedule to end the season. Clearly, it was a good idea.

I was also happy to see Nalbandian beat Roger Federer at the Madrid Masters tennis tournament. I have nothing against Federer and nothing in particular in favour of Nalbandian. But I'm of the belief that it's boring when one person or team wins too much in a sport.

Federer is the king of the tennis world with people talking of how he might be the best ever. Even better is that he seems like a quality guy all around. Never getting upset or too full of himself. A class act as they'd say.

Nevertheless, I think it's good if he loses every once in awhile. And this week it was Nalbandian, who got his first championship of the season and first ATP Masters title ever in the most unlikely of manners. Nalbandian had to defeat the top three players in the world to take the title.

In the quarters, he beat number two Rafael Nadal and then number three Novak Djokovic in the semis before offing Federer, the world number one. It even seemed unlikely that he'd do so after the first set, which Federer won 6-1 in about 30 minutes.

But Nalbandian came back by breaking Federer's serve in his first service game of the second set and didn't look back to win the match 1-6, 6-3, 6-3.

The unlikely is an inherent attaction of sports, and when it's diminished - that is, when the outcome seems likely - a sport's attractiveness suffers. Of late, I've begun to think that the English Premier League is losing some of its attractiveness, because the last few years it has seemed so likely that the 'big four clubs' - Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool - would be on top at season's end, and only their ordering was in doubt (i.e., who'd be 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th).

That kind of certainty is boring and unattractive. It makes the EPL look like the Italian league, and no one wants that.