Though the Australian Open, which takes place in late January and early February, is the first Grand Slam event of the year, there is a significant lull in professional tennis immediately afterwards that lasts for nearly two months. But now that March is upon us the tennis calendar kicks into full gear and this is really the true start of the prolonged tennis season. Beginning with this weekend in the California desert where the hard court BNP Paribas tournament is contested for both the men and women, there will be pretty much non-stop tennis through the summer.

What makes this year's kick-off to the spring/summer season even more appealing will be a special exhibition taking place Friday night. As part of the "Hit For Haiti" charity that Roger Federer started in Australia to aid the hundreds of thousands in need in that ravaged country just to our south, there will be a doubles match pitting Federer and Pete Sampras against their stellar and longtime foils, Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal (myself, I would have preferred Sampras and Nadal vs. Agassi and Federer to mix up the server/baseliner dynamic a bit). There will also be a women's exhibition featuring Martina Navratilova, Justine Henin, Lindsay Davenport and Steffi Graf.

It's a great way to usher in the 2010 tennis campaign and the sport would be wise to always come up with something novel at the start of each season. Commencing a new annual tradition would attract attention in the increasingly crowded sports universe.

An idea which nearly every tennis fan would heartily embrace, and in fact most have likely fantasized about occurring, would be to stage a wood racquet event every March. One of the never-ending debates in the sport is whether or not technology has significantly altered the game and caused a distortion of greatness and records along with it - or has it actually made the sport far more interesting. There is divergent opinions among the astute observers of the sport with many claiming that tennis has never been better and the larger and stronger racquet have been a part of that. And others are adamant that tennis failed to reign in technology and allowed the sport to be overcome by it.

To some - and the purist sports soul of yours truly is about three-quarters in agreement with this group - it is undeniable that the sport has changed dramatically in the intervening decades as a result of the technology and tennis authorities, what there was of them, failed in keeping a tight grip. Technology in tennis since 1980 has sort of run amok in a regulation-free environment ... sort of like Wall Street, no?

Does this mean that the current great players are any less "tennis athletes" than those of prior decades? Hardly. In fact, players today are more talented than ever. But why did the sport feel the need to allow technology to overwhelm and alter the course of the game in the first place? And for those obsessed with comparing champions across generations - which is foolhardy at best - it was made nearly impossible with players using such dramatically different equipment through the years.

The most obvious and accurate parallel with the wood racquet debate is that of the wood vs. aluminum bat in baseball. While aluminum bats are allowed in high school and colleges, they are not used in the minor leagues and obviously not in Major League Baseball. Tennis would have been wise to have used baseball as an example to follow. Perhaps younger tennis players would have been encouraged to start off with a larger and strong racquet to assimilate into the game easier but then have moved "down" to the smaller and less potent wood swords.

This change in racquets has led to the inevitable what-ifs, mostly regarding the serve. For example, would Roscoe Tanner, that hammering server from the 1970's been able to top the Andy Roddick record of 150mph if he had not been hitting with wood?

But in reality, the serve is the stroke that changed the least with the graphite and composite racquets that are the norm today. It is the ability to hit winners from behind the baseline that will be the legacy of the change in materials. There have always been dominating servers who could win games at will just on their powerful deliveries. But hardly ever in the earlier days of the Open Era would players have been strong enough to muscle a ground stroke past their opponent while standing 10 feet behind the baseline.

Yet this is all a moot point now. Wood is not coming back any time soon and anyway the sport, especially the men's game, has been in the throes of one of its greatest rivalries these last few years. So the overall health of tennis is pretty good.

But it'd be fun to watch this current crop of great players play with the old stuff. I'd love to see how they'd fare today playing with an old Slazenger or Wilson Jack Kramer Pro Staff or Donnay Borg Pro. Would Nadal be able to generate even one-fourth of the topspin he currently generates? Would Federer be able to use his all-court game at will with a racquet composed of beech and ash? How fast would Roddick's served be clocked while launching his missiles with a heavy wooden racquet?

So why not try it? It'd be great theater and I think sports fans - not just followers of tennis - would find it compelling. But would the players be wary of exhibiting their skills, or lack thereof, with the wood?