Tennis isn’t a very Nintendo sport. It’s an old game with excellent, easily comprehendible rules and many opportunities for personal drama. Tennis as a pastime though is plagued by elitism. It is played by and for the wealthy. Mario is a plumber for crying out loud, and his adventures are populist fare! All of his games are deep commentaries on wealth and class! They’re all about a working stiff with a tremendous vertical leap rescuing incompetent royalty from foreign aggressors. The guy’s just not the type you’d expect on the court or adept with a racket. He is though. Mario is an excellent tennis player and Mario Tennis Open, while not a riveting commentary on class warfare, happens to be pretty good too. It is perfectly populist Nintendo fare, but it only does a yeoman’s job of crafting a complete experience.

The tennis itself is a little bit different than it is on real world courts. In volleys, multicolored icons will appear where the ball is going to land, each color corresponding to one type of shot. A glowing white ghost icon for example will power up a drop shot provided you’re in the circle, and the ball will stop almost immediately where it lands if you pull it off. The courts vary as well, with hardtop and clay courts joined by ice courts, so timing the perfect shot is about chance and understanding your environment. These powered up returns and courts give Open its Super Mario flavor, that pleasant mix of the mundane and the spectacular that marks every game starring the mustachioed fella.

The Mushroom Kingdom’s usual suspects are present to compete in the game’s series of tennis tournaments. Mario, Luigi, the princesses, Bowser, and newcomers like Boo are all available to control on the court, and much like in their other sporting adventures—Mario Kart, Super Mario Strikers, etc.—their skills vary. Boo puts unbelievable spin on the ball while Wario’s got a mean power swing. In a new twist, you can also take your Mii on the court, and your personal avatar is a bit more malleable. There’s a pro shop in the game where you can purchase new rackets and outfits that change your stats.

Accessing more and more goods for your Mii is the raison d’etre for the game’s single-player modes. Playing through the multiple tiers of tournaments in both singles and doubles matches will unlock new items for purchase in the stores. This is an irritation though, as playing matches doesn’t earn you the coins needed to get that new pair of Fire Flower shoes.

Those coins are by playing mini games. You’ve got to work to get paid, and unfortunately most of the mini games in Open are about as fun as plumbing. While Ring Shot, where you have to aim the ball through randomly appearing rings on the court, is decent fun and good for improving your ball handling, the other three are chores. Super Mario Tennis sounds like a great idea on the surface: You’re batting the ball against a wall that’s scrolling through stages of the original Super Mario Bros. but it’s more awkward in execution than fun. Galaxy Rally is downright hard to follow. You’re batting the ball back toward disappearing platforms while also trying to collect pieces of a star for coins, but the ball can literally disappear in all the glitter and motion on the other side of the court.

The tennis is so much goofy fun that it’s a shame playing the side games is the only effective way to unlock new gear. The new gear isn’t essential to be competitive, against either the unusually cunning opponents in top tier tournaments or against real people online, but it certainly helps.

Conclusion

Mario Tennis Open is developer Camelot’s fifth Mario Tennis game, and much like past entries, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to just pick up and play. It isn’t hampered by the snottiness of real world tennis, it’s just inviting and colorful. Even the janky mini games don’t sully Open’s good time. It’s hard not to feel like this 3DS outing is lacking compared to past entries like Mario Tennis on Game Boy Color. That game packaged single player matches and character growth in an RPG-style story mode. While Mario Tennis Open’s disparate parts work well, some more than others, it’s missing something to make it all hang together as a cohesive whole. Unlike its star, Mario Tennis Open is a workhorse and not a craftsman.

Score: 6.5 out of 10

Reese Witherspoon isn’t letting her pregnancy slow her down!

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Looking stylish in a cute purple skirt, the pregnant star hit the tennis courts Wednesday at the Brentwood Country Club near her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles.

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In the action-shot photo, the 36-year-old star grimaces as she prepares to hit an approaching tennis ball. Witherspoon, who is pregnant with her third child and first with husband Jim Toth, showed off her impressive arm muscles while swinging her tennis racquet with all her strength. The actress is an avid runner and was even photographed taking a two-hour hike with a pal the same day Us Weekly broke the news of her pregnancy on March 21.

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The This Means War star has been dealing with family problems recently.

On May 11, Witherspoon accompanied her parents, Mary Elizabeth “Betty” Witherspoon and Dr. John Witherspoon, in court in Davidson County for an emergency hearing on her father’s bigamy case. In court papers filed May 8, Mary accused John of bigamy and asked that his Jan. 13 marriage to Tricianne Taylor be annulled. Witherspoon’s parents separated in 1996, but never officially divorced.

BREWER, Maine — The Bangor High School boys tennis team has spent the last decade among the pack chasing perennial state champion Lewiston for Eastern Maine Class A supremacy.

But this year the Rams have been the targeted team since the opening serve of their first match, and with a 10-0 record after Wednesday’s 5-0 victory at Brewer, coach Cindi Howard’s team has lived up to those expectations.

“Obviously, we want to go out and win every match,” said Bangor senior top seed Patrick Stewart. “The expectations are high, so hopefully we can keep it up.”

Bangor returned its entire starting lineup, six seniors and sophomore third seed Sam Bolduc, from the 2011 team that advanced to the regional semifinals before being eliminated by rival Hampden Academy.

“Last year we were a little disappointed that we were out of the playoffs so early, we thought we could have gone further,” said senior Robby Brookings, who teams with classmate Kris Bears at second doubles for the Rams. “But we knew that Lewiston and some of the other teams were losing a lot of seniors and we knew we’d all be back, so we figured this could be a good year for us.”

Last spring’s disappointment, combined with the promise this season offered, prompted many of the Bangor players — nearly all of whom are three-sport athletes at the school — to do something they hadn’t done before their previous tennis seasons, play occasionally during the winter.

“That’s what I encourage them to do,” said Howard. “Even though they’re playing other sports, if they could get together just one day a week and keep up with it, that would help, and they did a good job of that.”

That offseason work certainly hasn’t hurt the Rams. Stewart, Bolduc and senior second seed John Szewczyk have teamed with the doubles tandems of Chris Howat and Connor Griffin and Brookings and Bears to win 49 of their 50 individual matches to date.

Bangor won all five of its matches against Brewer in straight sets, with Stewart topping Ian Burgess 6-3, 6-4, Szewczyk defeating Josh Theriault 6-3, 6-1 and Bolduc besting Ryan Boothby 6-3, 7-5 in singles while Howat and Griffin defeated Jonathan Shedd and Gabe Valley 6-0, 6-0 and Bears and Brookings beat Marc Eremita and Eric Rodriguez 6-1, 6-0.

The only nonsweep of a match so far this spring came in Bangor’s 4-1 victory at Hampden on April 30 in which three of the five matches went the maximum three sets. Those teams are scheduled to meet again Friday in Bangor.

While Hampden has provided the stiffest test so far, the Rams’ most satisfying performance may have been their 5-0 win two days earlier at Lewiston — which has won the last nine Eastern A titles and eight of the last nine Class A state championships.

“They’re still a talented team,” said Stewart of Lewiston, which was 7-2 entering Wednesday’s play. “They were missing their first singles when they played us, so we know if we see them again it’s going to be a tough match.

“But it was really nice to beat them. John and I beat them freshman year individually and that was a big deal back then, but to get a collective team win and to get it the way we did, that was a real positive mental boost for us.”

The senior-laden Rams not only have to contend with their remaining opponents in their quest to bring Bangor its first state title in boys tennis since 2002, but also with some hectic final days of high school. Wednesday’s match, for example, was moved up an hour because of an academic awards banquet scheduled at the high school later in the evening.

And graduation for Bangor’s Class of 2012 comes June 3, one day after the regional semifinals and three days before the Eastern A championship match.

“We’ve got a lot of things coming up,” said Szewczyk, “but as long as we stay focused we should be OK. We’re all pretty close, and as long as we keep each other motivated we should be fine.”