Can you believe how badly my beloved Masha got hosed last night, in the Battle of the Cleavages, by that incredibly rude Miami crowd – and what about that Tatiana Golovin, pulling the fake ankle injury when she saw she couldn’t win the match – just like that demented dwarf Justine Henin-Hardenne in Australia!
Okay, all you anti-Sharapova Kool-Aid Drinkers, are your heads spinning on your necks yet? Are you spitting green bile? How about those eye sockets, any dribbling blood yet?
Good. That takes care of that. The rest of this post is for the other folks, the ones who actually breath through their noses (insert favorite smiley face icon here).
I’m not sure exactly where I would rank Sharapova’s graceless and seemingly willful “You just got hit by a bus but how exactly does that affect me?” routine last night, but it’s right up there with the most flagrant examples of bad – not even bad, but utterly lacking – sportsmanship that I’ve witnessed in the past few years. You can read the match summary here if you missed it.
I guess I have some kind of kharma thing going here. I’ve gone out of my way a few times in the recent past to stick up for Sharapova, on the grounds that her absolute professionalism (work ethic included) and willingness to give her all - and put her all on the line - in every match fulfills the first and most important obligation that a player has under the Player Fan Pact.
Last night, though, we saw what happens when that desire and combativeness is taken to the extreme, and it wasn’t pretty. I happened to bump into Mary Carillo in the hall this morning, and when I asked her what she thought, she made an interesting point. “All her life, Yuri (Sharapova, Maria’s father) has been in this girl's face, screaming how she has to fight, fight, fight. Well, that’s what she does and this is what it led her to.”
I felt pretty much the same way. You can cut it any you want, but last night, Sharapova didn’t merely seem poised – she appeared to be cold as ice. She didn’t merely seem focused – she appeared to be heartless. She didn’t seem professional – she appeared to be a dehumanized forehand-and-endorsement machine. Maybe it’s just a matter of taking the good with the bad, but just like it’s hard to love Sharapova’s game, it’s now become a little harder to love her person, too.
Sharapova fans are inevitably going to cut her slack when they read the explanation she offered for her callous indifference to Golovin’s troubles in a post-match presser (during which she was mostly lobbed softballs). Here's what she had to say about her lack of reaction to Golovin's injury:
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“Well, I did not know what happened until the ankle was being taped. I wasn't sure. I honestly thought it was cramps, that's why I was kind of getting ready, trying to get myself going, because I know after three or four minute layoff, you can get down and very sloppy. I wanted to make sure that didn't happen.
“When the ankle was becoming taped, I didn't know how serious it was, you know, until the first point, she just went for it and couldn't really walk. That's when I realized it was pretty bad. But, I mean, I didn't know for the first three minutes when she was down on the ground. I had no idea what happened.”
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Okay. Sharapova also said that she was trying to see what happened on the monitors, and the images there suggested that Golovin was just down with cramps. Are you buying that? I’m not, for a simple reason: players are always acutely aware of what’s happening on the court (if not in the last row of the bleachers). Now imagine a Roger Federer or an Amelie Mauresmo or Kim Clijsters – do you really think they would have been deceived for all that time, as Sharapova claimed to have been, if she had even a smidgen of curiosity or sympathy.
And then there were those two departures from the court at crunch time – the first for a bathroom break that Sharapova insisted she couldn’t delay at a crucial juncture, the other for a routine shirt change. It wouldn’t be seemly for me to speculate on an issue as delicate as the former, but Maria seems awfully young to be suffering from the kind of poor control that keeps pushing up the stock price of Depends. Besides, she gets all her stuff from Nike for free, right, so let’s assume that she. . . oh, let’s not go there.
But the thing is this: I go on Mary Pierce's case, big-time, for the long, momentum altering injury time out she took during her U.S. Open match with Elena Dementieva. I may be a hypocrite at times, but it's never willfully. So I have to hold Sharpova to the same high standard.
The first break was obviously a momentum breaker, because Golovin had just broken Sharapova to get back to 4-5. In fact, you couldn’t have scripted a more conspicuous time for Sharapova to take a break if your name were Yuri Hangeron. Here’s something about bad sportsmanship that every player should know but even John McEnroe never learned: it doesn’t matter if you didn’t mean it to be unsportsmanlike. It simply was.
The other break, later in the third set, for a shirt change, highlights one of my general beefs with the game these days, the lax standards that are creating so many needless, ambiguous situations and delays during matches. Tennis is a sport that doesn’t allow coaching. Yet every time I glance at the television screen, it seems to be showing Yuri or some other bad actor, well, coaching. It’s almost bad a situation as we had when ESPN was using Hawkeye, tournaments were not, and officials looked stupid. Such things really hurt the credibility of the game.
And this: Tennis is a sport of continuous play, but every time I jump out to the press box to catch a few games, some player or other is on a bathroom break, or taking an injury time out – often at some critical juncture. And how about the way people go to the towel between points now?
In fact, why do players have chairs on the court? These guys sit down more often than the folks working on the county road crew. And you wonder why some people still think it a sissy sport?
And what’s up with this leaving the court for a shirt change? Nike follows up the pudding-stained nighty look for Sharapova with this zippered, faux leather bustier thing that looks like something out of a bad Madonna video (I know, that’s redundant!).
Are you going to tell me that Sharapova can’t play a whole match on a cool night in one shirt? Or that she has to dress like a Sharon Stone Basic Instinct wannabe for “the good of the game”? How about a note to Nike and Maria: Why not try designing a shirt that’s actually practical to use for this activity called playing tennis?
Naw. At the end of the day – make that the night – Sharapova fans had the last laugh. Their girl ended up in the final, the other chick ended up in the hospital. Hey. it's a tough world out there, just ask Yuri! At the same time, there was a frosty majesty to the win, kind of like there was to the first album by the formidably gifted New Wave band, Television. People didn't buy that either, by the way.
When Sharapova was asked in her presser if she was surprised to hear the crowd booing her, she said: “No, it's part of the sport. It happens everywhere - NBA. I mean, the crowd needs entertainment.”
Maria: It wasn’t entertainment they needed, it was integrity, and the lack of it that they booed. I once called Venus Williams the Queen of Denial, but last night you knocked her off the throne and that's where you're staying until someone more deluded knocks you off.
P.S. - Golovin update, and I'm sorry I didn't take more to write about what a gamer she was last night: Her injury was diagnosed as an "acute left ankle sprain." No word yet on how long she'll be out.
Of course, she didn't do a presser. The quotes she sent through a third person didn't touch on any of the controversies, but contained this statement:
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Godspeed, Tatiania - see you in Europe!