In the September 14 issue of Page Six Magazine, free inside the New York Post, steamy supermodel and tennis wife Brooklyn Decker poses for her first ever shoot on the Brooklyn Bridge and pays homage to her home borough. In the article, Brooklyn talks sex appeal, her marriage, and those Jennifer Aniston rumors and the borough she and hubby, Andy Roddick, call home.

On being Brooklyn Decker:

"A producer recently gave me this weird compliment. He said, ‘You’re surprisingly unsexy. In film and pictures you turn it on and give the look, and then in person you’re a totally different human being.’ Which is good, because I don’t want to be Brooklyn Decker all the time."

On living in Brooklyn:

"Coming home after a job and hearing honking, I just needed to get out of Manhattan. And we have a dog, Billie Jean, and we wanted her to have space. I grew up in North Carolina, and we spend a lot of our time in Austin, Texas, so Brooklyn is a happy medium. You have Manhattan living, but you still get the neighborhood feel. I’m a total sucker. Now every time I land at JFK or LaGuardia I get so excited, whereas before I used to get stressed out. [Also] Barneys Co-Op is coming and I’m so excited. It’s symbolic of how much Brooklyn has changed, even from like five years ago."

On being married at 23 years old:

"It wasn’t weird for me. My mom got married when she was 19, and my husband’s parents got married young—in their 20s. And both sets of parents are still together. We’re so lucky. We had that influence around us, and basically, it came down to the fact that neither of us had to get married. We both were successful on our own, we both had our own income, we both had our friends, but it’s just what we wanted. It was never part of my plan to get married young, but we did it because we really wanted to. We saw no other way."

On Andy’s celebritiy crushes:

"Andy definitely has crushes. He loves women in their forties and fifties. He loves Christie Brinkley and Diane Lane. A woman who’s graceful and has it all together. So not me."

On the world of high fashion:

"When I started out, I wanted to be that tiny runway girl, but I’m not super skinny. I have boobs. I’m very all-American. Quirky was definitely in, which I find quite beautiful, but that’s not what I am. In fashion, there needs to be something unique, and I wasn’t edgy. Plus, I’d walk in and be like, ‘Hey guys!’ with a big smile on my face. And they’d be like, ‘You are not cool. You are too nice.’ I got a lot of, ‘If you want to walk a runway, there is a standard that you have to fit. They’re not gonna change the standard for you.’ But funnily enough, the second I started accepting that this is who I am, I started working a ton."

On the Jennifer Aniston rumors:

"I don’t know where that stuff comes from. Two people fighting is much more interesting than two people getting along. But I find it disappointing that people’s first instinct is to pit two women against each other. You get a few bad apples in there, but overall women do root for each other and want to help each other. Jen is such a doll—she is such a girl’s girl. Guys are terrified that if all the women band together we’ll take over the world, so they’re trying to keep us apart."

Check out the entire interview with Brooklyn on Tuesday in Page Six Magazine, free inside the New York Post and at pagesixmag.com.

With the Australian Open coming to an end in January, the beginning of the 2010 Tennis season started.  If you didn’t catch it or don’t care about tennis, for the purposes of this argument, I must describe to you how I draw the correlation between Video Games like Soul Caliber and Street Fighter and Tekken and Killer Instinct and etc. and Tennis.

When the match starts, both players are on equal playing ground, the first of many similarities between Tennis and fighting video games.  Choosing Mitsurugi or Voldo or Ryu or Yoshimitsu is just like picking a tennis player.  They all have individual strengths and weaknesses, they all train year round, and they all use the court and all of the tools involved as weapons to defeat their opponents.  Very similar to any video game is the sense of equality on the court.  Everyone has the same amount of health, and the ability to learn everything there is to know about the game.  Equality is important to judge any specific players skill level.  In the past, numerous wild card tennis players, players who are ranked much lower than number 1 but who luck out and get the draw to compete in a world wide tournament, have put up impressive battles in the final matches against some of the greatest players of all time because of how equal the playing field is in Tennis.  Some of them win, much like picking a character you are unfamiliar with and winning.

Another universal similarity is that the entire match involves only two people, unless you’re watching a doubles match, but either way Tennis matches are intimate duels with people on a global scale.  This represents not only the player, but the people behind whichever player they relate to and like to watch.  If I like Roger Federer (1) more than Andy Murray (4), I’ll be sitting sideline in my apartment with the flag of Switzerland draped over my legs watching Federer move with finesse and grace around the court like a dancer.  What fighting video game characters make the fighting look easy?  Rafael?  Astaroth?  Ryu?  Dan?

Scoring is similar in that players win points for each successful move and eventually add up their winnings until they’ve one best out of 3 or 5.  The first game of a tennis match normally has the players performing at their peek.  In the case of Federer vs. Murray, the final match of the 2010 Australian Open, Murray struggled to keep up with Federer in his first two games, but by the third game he was putting everything he had in it.  Some players, like Marcos Baghdatis (36) or Jo-Wilfreid Tsonga (10) or Murray might need the energy the audience projects to get them playing at the top of their game.  Some players.  Others like Federer or Rafael Nadal (3) are consistently good at the game.  No matter how your room of gamers or the stadium of fans explodes with emotion at the match; the playing is still the same for the best of the contestants in both fields.  Daigo, a world-renown Street Fighter champion, plays his game much like Federer plays his.  If it were only that easy.

Each player is unique in both games.  Some like the French tennis player Gael Monfils (12) play the game so uniquely and with so much energy that it’s hard to read and understand the moves he’s throwing at his opponent.  Ever wonder how Dhalsim just teleported from one side of the map to the other, while floating, to end up shooting fireballs at you when you first fought him?  You’d wonder the same thing if you knew as much about Tennis when Monfils flies across the court and snaps his knees back and forth like invincible rubber bands set on giving his fans some physical poetry to watch as well as confuse his opponent.  But, these uniqueness’s also have their drawbacks.

Dhalsim is slow, he has range, and uses voodoo, but a competent player of Ryu or Ken or anyone for that matter can see his faults and compromise on them.  Dhalsim can do the same for a consistent Hadouken Ryu, but either way the sport of tennis and of fighting video games utilizes the same plus/minus affair.  Any duel does for that matter.  In the case of Monfils, his "invincible," knees only appear that way causing his major drawback to winning a world championship to be because of knee surgeries and fatigue.  While I can compare Tennis to Soul Caliber and Street Fighter, I could also say the same about Fencing or Boxing but those are much more traditional and easier to draw the connection between the two.  In Tennis, no one is punching or trying to poke the other person.  It’s all about skill and sportsmanship with a racquet and a neon ball.

Essentially the world of competitive Tennis and competitive fighting video games are similar.  Where one player sits on the couch and taps directions and buttons, the other spends the whole year training on a court to revel in the victory they may have over some of the best players in the world.  One may be in much better physical shape, but other than that, the psychological elements of the two easily permeate with the adrenaline junky inside of me.  The luxury of sitting on the couch and playing alone is only a luxury when it’s not held in comparison to standing in the middle of a brilliant tennis court in front of the Prince of England to accept one of the many trophies you rightfully deserve.  But, at least the basics are the same.  Down ->Forward + Punch?  Say hello to the slice.

English Scottish tennis star Andy Murray plays a lot of video games. You might think he wouldn’t have time, you know, being a professional and multimillion dollar athlete and all, but still, he does.

Apparently, his love for the digital art we admire so fondly was too much for now ex-girlfriend Kim Sears, as she’s ended it between the two.

Sears allegedly became fed up with Murray’s “7 hours a day” gaming habit on his PlayStation 3, reportedly playing an unnamed tennis title and Modern Warfare 2, and said “No more Mr. Murrary, we’re though!”

Now, this story is unverifiable and simply speculation at the moment, but according to Brad Gilbert, Murray’s former coach, and sources close to Sears, this happened:

Brad Gilbert, Murray’s former coach, has said in the past that Murray spends “seven hours a day” playing video games.

The source told The Sun: “He would spend all his time glued to them. In the end she just got fed up with it. She wanted more out of the relationship.”

The story has oddly vanished from the Sun’s Web site, but can still be read, in full, at the Telegraph.

update- I’m an idiot. Murray is Scottish. Thanks for the tip Gayle

Source: Kotaku

Pilot Pen will drop its sponsorship of the annual New Haven professional tennis event, the New Haven Register reported, putting one of the only professional sporting events in Connecticut’s second largest city in jeopardy.

The event will go on next year, August 20-28, but the pen company will drop its sponsorship when its contract is up after that.

The register reported that Pilot Pen has been sponsor of the annual event, which features a men’s and women’s tournament, since 1996. It is held in downtown New Haven, near the Yale Bowl and Yale Field in the 13,000-seat Connecticut Tennis Center. The newspaper reported that Pilot Pen put up $1.4 million annually for the tournament.

“We firmly believe that Pilot Pen Corporation’s long-term support of the Pilot Pen Tennis tournament has helped us grow the sport of tennis in the Northeast and put us in a solid position to attract a new title sponsor," tournament director Anne Worcester said in a statement "This tournament has developed into an entertainment event featuring some of the world’s best professional tennis players as well as many off-court events which have expanded our reach to all types of fans. A combined men’s and women’s tournament is a very desirable sports property and will appeal to national and regional partners alike."

"We have enjoyed being the title sponsor of the Pilot Pen Tennis tournament" said Dennis Burleigh, President and CEO of Pilot Pen Corporation of America in the same statement. "Unfortunately, the economic recession has severely impacted our consumers and the office products industry in particular, necessitating this difficult decision."

Third-seeded Venus Williams, a 2002 finalist at the French Open, was upset on Friday by no. 29 seed Agnes Szavay 6-0, 6-4 at Roland Garros on Friday. Sister Serena Williams is set to meet unseeded Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez in the third round tomorrow, and the pair are still in the doubles field at the grand slam tournament.

On the men’s side, no. 1 seed Rafael Nadal made his way into the Round of 16 with a 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 win over Lleyton Hewitt and extended his clay court win streak to 30 matches. No. 2 seed Roger Federer is set to play no. 32 seed Paul-Henri Mathieu for a spot in the quarterfinals, while no. 6 seed Andy Roddick made the third round for the first time in eight years with a 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 (2) win over 85th-ranked Ivo Minar.

So we have one NFL series, barely two NBA franchises and now at least three tennis games. Four if you count Wii Sports.

Electronic Arts announced Wednesday that they are creating a tennis video game to rival 2K Sports’ Top Spin and Atari’s Smash Court. The new EA Sports tennis game will first be available for Wii at some time next year, with other platforms to folow.

It will be the first EA Sports game to use Nintendo’s new Wii MotionPLus accessory that adds an added dimension of accuracy to the WiiMote.

“As we look to expand the EA Sports brand and captivate sports fans from around the world with rich new interactive experiences, it was obvious that the renaissance we’re seeing in the sport of tennis provides us with a big opportunity,” said Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, in a statement Wednesday. “Our new tennis franchise, coming first to the Wii, will put fans right into the action and provide the excitement, tension and drama that true champions feel in legendary matches – like the classic from Wimbledon just last month.”

For more information, visit www.easports.com/tennis.