Every tennis board I’ve visited lately has turned up a thread on the problems and frustrations fans have with televised coverage.

Today’s matches at the Australian Open pose a particular problem for tennis diehards. Not only do we have a plethora of amazing third round action to contend with and keep up with, we’re also at the mercy of a collectivity of crappy televised offerings.

Forget the general rants about covered matches being aired late and put aside the stinging reality that your favorite player may not even make the TV network’s cut of who they should show…. What do you do if you want to watch the night match?

Tonight’s match, Marat Safin versus Andy Roddick, will undoubtedly be one of the best matches of the tournament. Or at least of the tournament so far.

Yes, I realize this is a time zone difference issue, but bear with me.

In the Eastern time zone of the U.S., the match will air live at 3:30am. Whoa. Who the hell wants to walk around like a zombie on Friday? (Correction: A zombie who’s not hungover) Sure, you could tape the match to watch at your leisure the next day or over the weekend, and avoid every newspaper, the Internet and that chatty dude who gets in your face at work, right? Not bloody likely mate.

[Incidentally, I've been guilty of the above. If you're reading this JH, I apologize. Again.]

What about people who don’t have taping ability? You could watch the matches via YouTube right? Wrong. Add to this taping dilemma that Tennis Australia has been working with Google aka YouTube to pull down video of the Open from the video provider’s website. My very own account at YouTube was suspended yesterday after receiving a few DCMA violation notices for video that I would submit do not violate legitimate fair use practices… but since I have no recourse, move on, move up. Find another video provider, right?

Well, it also appears that coverage is thinning in the U.S. too. In case you haven’t noticed over the past week, ESPN2 has sold an apparent miniscule of advertising during the matches in the U.S. While this is great for American fans, who get to spend 30 extra seconds cooly eyeing players at the side of the court while they mentally rehearse during the changeover; it’s not a good foreshadowing of things to come for future coverage. ESPN already sold the rights for Roland Garros to The Tennis Channel.

Which brings us to our humble struggling cable tennis network (sigh). Anecdotally, I was talking with a friend this weekend about the Australian Open, about coverage, and generally about the sport. He said that he had seen bits of coverage as he channel surfed past ESPN2 during the late afternoon. As we talked more and more, he naively asked me why ‘The Tennis Channel doesn’t show… tennis’.

After I recovered from the snarfed gin and tonic incident which fully paralyzed me, I was forced to stop for a second and ponder. Rather than go into the litany of outrages that swelled inside me, I simply patted him on the shoulder and giggled that he was a very smart guy.

So, back to the (sort of) point/dilemma at hand: Do I stay up to see Safin vs Roddick? It may screw up my Friday, but I may go ahead and do it. I’ll probably sleep fitfully if I don’t, and if I do sleep, I’ll be super pissed when I see the result the next day (mistakenly or not). Given that there won’t be a rain delay (cough: U.S. Open) for coverage interuption, I probably won’t get to see it again anyway. It’s sure to be a helluva match.

What are you going to do?