Nike, America needs to talk to you. Maybe it's because you're afraid of a post-Olympics drop in sports fever, but you should know better than trying to change the game of tennis into something it's not. Specifically, another sport entirely: boxing.

Last night, Nike hosted a kick-off for the Open with "Grapple in the Apple" (ugh), a boxing-esque PR stunt that is, one assumes, to draw interest and coverage to the sport. Conveniently, the sports brand has endorsement deals with both Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, who just happen to be tennis' biggest rivalry at the moment. This means they can sponsor a showdown between the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the sport. And they've gone and hired frazzle-haired Don King to host the thing.

Completing the boxing metaphor, then, are the nicknames slapped on the players: Roger "The Magician of Precision" Federer and Rafa "Matador of Spin" Nadal." Ew.

Except there was already a Roger Federer v. Rafa Nadal match earlier this year in Wimbledon, and it's been called "the greatest tennis match in history." So let's promote that, Nike, instead of "the greatest tennis game that's actually a marketing stunt that's pretending to be another sport because it's ashamed of itself."

(Equally ridiculous is the U.S. Open hiring celebrity-supported event in New York">Forest Whitaker to M.C. the opening ceremonies, with Earth, Wind, and Fire and The Jersey Boys stopping by.)

Know what this strikes us as? The same desperate attempt by the cable news networks to treat face-offs between candidates as boxing matches. With Obama and Clinton's bout over, now we've got Barack in the blue corner and McCain in the red corner. But since Don King costs too much for either party to afford, we're left with Tom Brokaw leading this heated contest.