Awesome Andrey

Oh my my - who is this handsome young man who has swept into the final of Hamburg like a freight train?

Andrey Golubev, you rock on with your bad self. You are AWESOME. If it was not already abundantly clear, I am your fangirl. Big time.

Andrey has knocked out a bunch of people who should have beaten him this week. Florian Mayer in the semis. Denis Istomin, who I talked about a few days ago as a major up-and-comer suddenly playing awesomely. And, oh yeah, Nikolay Davydenko. How about that?

I've rabbited on and on and on about how impressed I was with him when I saw him play at the Hopman Cup this year. He tailed away after that and although there were flashes of that redline game that saw him beat Andreev, he didn't stay as awesome. But hello, daddy-o, I think the awesome is coming back. This has not been a cakewalk draw to the final, not at all. I repeat - Davydenko. I know Kolya's not exactly the captain of the form squad right now, but DAVYDENKO. C'mon.

And he also had a birthday this week. He might have missed 23 July, tennis's holy day, but he's only one away, and maybe some of that glitter has rubbed off.

You keep your awesome up, Andrey. Because that's what you are - awesome.