Dan Weil, who wrote that touching Tennis Life column on choking in the last issue of TENNIS, read my recent post suggesting that the frequent characterization of tennis as “civilized boxing” is a sorely bankrupt cliché. He makes an interesting point in this note:
The subject made me think of Sesil Karatantcheva (I can hear you thinking, “Just how would that be?”), the combative Bulgarian dynamo who is off to a good start at Indian Wells again this year. Last year, you may remember, Sesil, then 14, made a big splash by cheerily predicting that when she met Maria Sharapova, she would “kick her a-- off.”
It was a hilarious episode, displaying both her tenuous grasp of the English language and her warrior-princess mindset. The WTA spinmeisters went apoplectic. For the next few days, even after Sharapova crisply put the enthusiastic Karatantcheva in her place with a sound beating, the press kept trying ever new and more creative ways to get the girl to repeat the insipid phrase (“So, ah, Sesil—if you were to meet Sharapova again and thought you could beat her, exactly what words would you put that conviction in . . .”).
And Sesil, for her part, loved every moment of it, glancing at the mortified WTA handlers lurking in the corners of the room whenever she repeated the phrase—which she did at every opportunity, in exactly the same, transparently button-pushing way that my two-year old son Luke recently kept parroting a certain synonym for “offal” that inadvertently passed my lips.
Sesil, all of 15 now, says: “The attention was cool, but I prefer getting all this attention with my game, rather than with my mouth. It was a phase every 14-year-old goes through in life and it was my lesson.”
Next, she’ll be thanking the ball kids and sponsors. It’s the way of the world.
And she seems fated to be in that position soon; it helps that her coach, who’s sky-high on her potential, is Nick Bollettieri. Sesil came into Indian Wells with a noteworthy 10-5 record. She is leading a parade of youngsters, whose exploits yesterday are documented here.
Unfortunately, Sesil plays Lindsay Davenport in the second round, so I may not even get to see her play (I arrive in Indian Wells Tuesday morning).