Janet Dale, famous last spring as part of the Grizzly Growlers blog team, has volunteered to blog a bit from the Regions Morgan Keegan tennis event at the Racquet Club. Here’s her next entry:

As I drove around town today (literally ALL around: Downtown, Midtown, East Memphis, Bartlett) I kept having to remind myself that it’s February. There is a tennis tournament going on, it’s pushing 70 degrees AND it’s February.

Could it be because of all the hot tennis players we have in our midst?
Andy(s), Tommy, Mardy, & Venus: this means y’all!

After enjoying a wonderful evening of tennis last night (parking issues solved by my very own “chauffeur” experience in a Saturn) I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us tonight. I won’t be there in person (have I mentioned that already?), but I’ll be glued to the television. Comcast, don’t let me down.

A quick HELLO again to the person driving an “official car” down Poplar this afternoon. I waved. We’re just THAT friendly here.

Predictions? I think/hope the Andy(s) (Roddick and Murray) will pull through.

I thought I was headed over to Northside tonight to see a pretty attractive District 16-AAA boys basketball tournament final pitting defending Class AAA state champion Hamilton and Fairley.

But how can I resist a storyline in District 15-AAA that has a No. 3 seed in Kirby taking on a No. 5 seed in Wooddale for the district title?

It’s funny, it was in a Feb. 1 column of mine entitled “No easy games in 15-AAA” that Wooddale boys coach Eric Harris said these words: “It’s so even. Even the teams toward the bottom that aren’t doing as well, you’d better play well against them or you’ll lose.”

Who would have thought that Harris, whose team was 15-4 at the time, would actually be talking about his own squad by the time the postseason rolled around, considering that Wooddale limped into this tournament a loser in five of its final eight regular-season games?

Then the Cardinals take down top-seeded Ridgeway on Monday in a semifinal. And Kirby - a team that knocked off just about everyone in the district except Ridgeway during the regular season, yet received little love in terms of publicity this season - knocks off No. 2 seed White Station to set up one of the most unlikely district tournament finals in recent memory.

So I’m off to Houston High this evening, and I’m wondering, who’s the underdog in this one?