Mark Philippoussis' latest injury occurred just last week, when he tore the lateral meniscus cartilage in his right knee during a Hopman Cup singles match. Ella Ling/Getty Images
	MAILBAG Jon Wertheim will answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag every Wednesday. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

With the retirement of Mark Philippoussis almost a certainty, what's the verdict on his career as a whole? Sure, he may not have won a major but let's face it, this guy got the business end of the injury stick (especially in 1999 at Wimbledon) and yet he came back again and again. He didn't have to play for money. He wanted to win. If that injury didn't happen at Wimbledon against Sampras, who knows how high he could have gone?
-- Mark Johnston, Port Lambton, Ont.

I wouldn't be so fast to write off Philippoussis. Working with Gil Reyes and Darren Cahill this offseason, he was allegedly playing some of the best tennis of his life. Who's to say his 427th comeback isn't in the offing? And not so fast re: "He didn't have to play for the money." He will not go down as one of the sport's smart shoppers. We'll leave it there.

In any case, your larger point is well-taken. Philippoussis is perceived as a underachiever of cosmic dimension. In some ways, he was impaled by his own early success. He takes out Pete Sampras in the late rounds of a major, he reaches the U.S. Open final as a pup, and he sets the expectations bar awfully high. And, yes, he had terrible luck with respect to injuries. With better health, it's easy to seem him serving his way to a Wimbledon title. One Grand Slam under his belt (see: Ivanisevic, Goran) and he's cast in a much different light.

Speaking of health, this is waaay far afield, but I want to share this before it slips my mind:

I was talking to James Blake a few days ago and he brought up an interesting point. In tennis, the punishment for drug cheats -- suspension -- is really no punishment at all. The sport is exceptionally grueling with virtually no offseason and an unrelenting travel schedule. Telling a player, "You have six months of no matches and no travel, but you can work on your game, improve your fitness and convalesce your aches and pains" isn't exactly a harsh sentence.

"Take a look at guys like [Juan Ignacio] Chela and now [Guillermo] Canas," says Blake. "They took time off [for a doping suspension] and came back playing some of their best tennis."

Maybe it's time for the ITF and ATP to reconsider the doping penalties.

What ever happened to the Dutch player John van Lottum? I don't know if he is still playing, but I was wondering if you had heard anything about what he is up to.
-- Debbie Winkler, New York

Writeth Sharko: "Nice to see a John van Lottum fan out there. He played briefly last year (one Challenger, one ATP tournament) before retiring. In the past couple of years he was battling injuries."

Shots, miscellany

• Another Slam, another suicide Poll. Click here to enter. And again, I'll throw a prize at the winner.

• The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Board of Directors has voted unanimously to extend the contract of Tour Chairman & CEO Larry Scott for an additional five years, through 2011.

• Have a few minutes to fritter away at work? Watch this and thank Andy E. of San Diego.

• Look for James Blake to release an "as told to" book later this year, around the time of the U.S. Open.

• Anthony of Redwood City, Calif., writes: "Thought you might find this interesting ..."

Cam Bennett of Geelong, Australia, gets the final word this week:

While I'm all for the improvement of the game, can we perhaps respond to all of the suggestions in your last mailbag with some new year cheer and perspective?

• Let's love every second of every match this year, appreciating the joy and wonder of watching two or four elite athletes with nothing more than a racquet in their hands fighting for success with all they possibly can give. Let's love watching qualifiers who smash, spin, and caress the ball in ways we can hardly comprehend, desperate to defeat each other and earn the cash to move on to the next event, before we watch men and women later in the week whom we will tell our grandchildren about.

• Let's love the game's history -- our grandparents understood the old scoring system, and so will we -- and its mix with modernity, tie-breaks and instant replay.

• Let's love the Davis Cup -- the event that I have heard current Australian, Croatian, Russian, and Spanish players claim to be their career highlight during the past fortnight. And while we're at it, let's love the genuinely international taste of the sport.

• Let's love the fact that the chances of our tennis heroes being tainted by drug-taking or match-fixing scandals is slim to none.

• Let's love that it's a game of endurance and the mind in a world in which we are often being treated as short-attention-span-riddled, dense consumers.

• Let's love that feeling of choosing to watch the match on Court 18 that goes the distance -- an epic four-hour five-setter that exhausts players and spectators and makes you feel like you're experiencing the most spectacular sporting spectacle in the world throughout sets 4 and 5.

• And finally, let's appreciate the fact that watching these men and women play such a pure and beautiful game permits us to escape from the troubles of the world for a few hours. Society allows us to watch them, discuss them, read about them, and argue about them, as if this is the most important thing in the world.

Bring on 2007!