Tym Glaser, Associate Editor - Sports

IS IT just me, or has top-flight tennis fallen into a rut? I've been watching the Australian Open action televised from my old stomping ground in Melbourne and I've found it - with the rare odd exception - rather tedious.

Maybe, my malaise is due to the late hours that some of the live matches hit the screen here, but I really don't think so. I can watch Australia play England and New Zealand in cricket at the same obscene hours and not be bored senseless despite the lopsided results.

Nope, men's and women's tennis are in trouble and for two what appear to be markedly different reasons.

Starting with the fellas, world number one, Roger Federer, who's making a strong case to be called the greatest player of all time, is killing the game softly with his sublime skills.

Widening gap

Outside of the clay court season, the Swiss star is well nigh unbeatable. His all-court game is light years ahead of any of his contemporaries and the gap just appears to be widening.

Take his semi-final clash with Andy Roddick this week. The American is regarded as Federer's greatest threat on hard and grass courts. He has honed his game under the tutelage of the great Jimmy Connors with one aim in mind: to beat Roger.

A win over the Swiss in an exhibition tournament at Kooyong earlier this month sure pumped up Roddick and then - sadly - came the much-anticipated semi showdown and Andy's meltdown.

Federer sent Roddick back to the drawing board with a 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 caning and showed him you need more than a big serve and a pseudo volley game to run with the king.

Roger now meets Chilean Fernando Gonzalez in tonight's (our time) men's final. Gonzalez, like Roddick, has a big serve and also boasts a wicked forehand but he's 0-9 against Roger the Dodger and that record just ain't gonna improve in Melbourne.

It's not Federer's fault he's so good and has no McEnroe to his Bjorg or Agassi to his Sampras but he has the personality of a cabbage. He's probably a really nice guy but he could bore the leg off a chair and in the absence of a rivalry the men's game at least needs some personality.

While the Federer Express is steamrolling the men's field and its overall appeal, the women's game is being hammered not by greatness but by mediocrity.

If an under-done Serena Williams can make the Aussie Open final playing at about 50 per cent of her capacity, the women's game is a mess.

Maria Sharapova, the women's No. 1 seed and her final opponent last night, grunts great and looks even better but she has no second serve and is an unforced errors machine.

Unlike the men's game, women's events don't get interesting until at least the quarter-finals of big events because the talent pool is so weak.

More female stars

Take out the Williams sisters, Belgians Kim Clijsters (retiring this year) and Justine Henin-Hardenne, Lindsay Davenport (pregnant), Martina Hingis, Amelie Mauresmo and Sharapova and you've just basically got a whole lot of young girls going around with last names that all seemingly end in 'ova'.

I partly blame the Williamses because they brought the power game to women's tennis and then just left it there. Now every lass tries to serve hard and belt the ball without learning the fundamentals.

A Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf or Monica Seles in their prime would have had this Aussie Open field for lunch - even Serena, whose reputation seems more intimidating than her game which, by the way, is miles from its peak of a few years ago.

Women's tennis needs some true stars and, more importantly, some real players.