Ginepri and Oudin to Headline USTA's Australian Open Wildcard Playoff

Locals, Robby Ginepri and Melanie Oudin are among the four women and three men that have been invited to participate in the 2011 Kia Australian Open Wild Card Playoffs, held December 16-18, at the Racquet Club of the South, a USTA Certified Regional Training Center in Atlanta.  The complete field for the eight-man and eight-woman playoff will be announced as players are confirmed.

The USTA and Tennis Australia have a reciprocal agreement in which men’s and women’s singles main draw wild cards into the 2011 US Open and the 2012 Australian Open are exchanged.

The four women who will compete include: Oudin (Marietta, Ga.), who in 2009 became the youngest American to reach the quarterfinals at the US Open since Serena Williams in 1999, and who helped lead the U.S. to back-to-back Fed Cup finals in 2009-10; Jamie Hampton (Auburn, Ala.), who successfully qualified for the 2011 Australian Open and who reached a career-high WTA ranking of No. 116 in April; Alison Riske (McMurray, Pa.), who reached the quarterfinals of the 2011 Wimbledon tune-up event in Birmingham, England, and who has won two $50,000 events in France this year; and Coco Vandeweghe (Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.), who broke into the WTA top 100 this year and reached a career-high No. 89 in April.  Vandeweghe won this event in 2009 to earn a wild card into the 2010 Australian Open, and also reached the final of last year’s event.   

The three men invited to compete include: Ginepri (Kennesaw, Ga.), the only active American male besides Andy Roddick to reach the semifinals of a Grand Slam event (2005 US Open), who is coming back from an arm injury that he suffered in 2010; Denis Kudla (Arlington, Va.), who reached the quarterfinals at the ATP World Tour event in Newport, R.I., in July; and Jack Sock (Lincoln, Neb.), who in 2010 became the first American to win the boys’ singles title at the US Open since Roddick in 2000.

Ryan Harrison and Lauren Davis won the 2010 playoffs after three days of intense play to earn wild cards into the 2011 Australian Open.

Robby Ginepri is slated to play in this year's USTA Australian Open Wildcard Playoff

Deer Busts into Atlanta Area Sports Bar

Sports fans watching football got some half-time entertainment when a deer burst into the restaurant.

It happened at the Taco Mac on Windward Parkway in Alpharetta, GA.

Fans were watching the Atlanta Falcons game.  He or she quickly ran out a door onto the patio and then left. The deer was not injured, and was seen running away from the parking lot.

Those "Pop Up" Halloween Stores are Popping Up Around Atlanta

The job market is tough, but there is a welcoming sight all across the country and especially here in Atlanta. Halloween stores are opening all over the area and providing the unemployed a job during these trying times. Halloween Thrills is one of the seasonal stores opening in the area providing both jobs for the unemployed and the filling of vacant retail locations.

To date, Halloween Thrills has hired 20 temporary employees in the Atlanta area. "We've received several hundred applications and have only 60 positions to fill for our three locations at Atlantic Station, Roswell, and Kennesaw," said Al Adkisson, who runs a chain of local Halloween Thrills retail stores in the Metro Atlanta Area. “And, it's not just people looking for an extra job. For a lot of people that work for us, it is the job that's holding them over until they can find something permanent," Adkisson said.

With Atlanta's 10.4 percent retail vacancy rate, temporary stores, like Halloween Thrills, have found a niche. They come in, pay rent for a couple months and then disappear until the next Halloween season. While not a permanent tenant, these seasonal stores offer a boost to the economy every year and landlords and management companies are more than willing to lease the space.

If you didn't know, Halloween is huge.  According to the National Retail Federation, it is estimated that Americans will spend $5.8 Billion this year for Halloween. Not only costumes for adults and children, many are also dressing up their pet or decorating for Trick-or-Treat and Halloween parties. The stores are already fully stocked with a huge selection of costumes for both adults and children and have a wide variety of accessories for the customer who likes to design their own

Metro Atlanta Billboard Prompts 911 Calls

An Outback Steakhouse sign on I-85 in Norcross, Ga., touting its wood-fire grilled steaks, is doing it's job and sending people into a tizzy, but for the wrong reason.

Several motorists driving on the Georgia Interstate called 911 to report that the billboard was on fire! It is indeed smoking, but it's not actually on fire. It is just an illusion generated by smoke machines embedded in the sign.

As you can see from the sign, it is smoke that is coming out of the wood pictured on the sign.  I think it's genius.

This brings to mind one time I was in Los Angeles and a movie studio wrapped a building in L.A. to promote a movie, must have been Deep Impact or Armageddon, or a similar movie.  Well, the building wrap made it look like there was a hole in the building.  Motorists on the freeways started calling asking about it and it snarled traffic even more than usual. 

They eventually had to remove the wrap on the building, but it did generate a ton of publicity.

Wildcard Wednesday in Baseball

Both National and American League wild card races will go down to the last day of the regular season after Tampa Bay and Boston won on Tuesday while St Louis caught up with faltering Atlanta.

If the teams finish tied after their regular season finales on Wednesday, a one-game playoff will decide who advances to the postseason later this week.

Crucial games tonight include:

Boston at Baltimore

N.Y. Yankees at Tampa

Philadelphia at Atlanta

St. Louis at Houston.

I predict we will have one, if not two playoff games tomorrow.  All the games will be on ESPN channels.