Friday, February 1
Last updated at 2:10 am EDT
AMERICAN PRESS
Where Did All Those Gorgeous Russians Come From? - Washinton Post (reprinted in Slate, etc.)
In the aftermath of the Australian Open, a tennis tournament whose final rounds featured a parade of notably stunning ex-Soviet-bloc players, it is perhaps time to make a stab at answering my friend's question. Whatever you may say about the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, it was not widely known for feminine pulchritude. Whatever you may say about women's professional tennis in the 1970s or '80s, it did not feature many players who looked like Maria Sharapova, the latest Australian Open victor.Where were they all before?
Though this is a fairly frivolous question (OK, extremely frivolous), I am convinced it has an interesting answer. To put it bluntly, in the Soviet Union there was no market for female beauty... This doesn't mean there weren't any beautiful women, of course, just that they didn't have the clothes or cosmetics to enhance their looks, and, far more important, they couldn't use their faces to launch international careers. Beauty is a matter of luck, but the same could be said of many other talents. And what open markets do for beautiful women they also do for other sorts of genius.
Case in point: After losing in the semifinals at Beijing in September, Davenport walked into the dressing room. Her nanny and Jagger were waiting. Davenport asked the nanny if they'd leave for a few minutes. Davenport proceeded to do some damage to her racket, then invited her traveling party back inside. “I took a couple minutes, then was back in mother mode,” she said. “The most important thing, obviously, is my son and his well-being. You have to move on.”And sometimes the mother must chill out. At the tournament in Bali, Davenport looked into the stands and saw the sun hitting Jagger's forehead. “I was like freaking on the court,” Davenport told The New York Times. “But then I was like, 'Lindsay, you have to let it go.' ”
Take last year's and this year's Australian Open, for example. When Maria Sharapova suffered a 6-1, 6-2 beating from Serena Williams in the 2007 final, she was rewarded the next day with the No. 1 ranking.Now, after two weeks of plowing through the Melbourne draw without dropping a set — and thumping the current No. 1, Justine Henin, 6-4, 6-0 en route — she remains ensconced at No. 5, exactly where she started the year. What's a girl to do?
Among those will be 22-year-old Ashley Harkleroad of Georgia, who made her Midland debut as a teenager a few years ago and went on to reach a world ranking of 39th in 2003... Woody is also excited to welcome 16-year-old Russian Anastasia Pivovarova to Midland. Pivovarova is ranked No. 234 in the world but already has five ITF singles titles to her credit... Another player to watch is 21-year-old Su-Wei Hsieh of Chinese Taipei, who is ranked 158th and stands to be the sixth seed at the Dow Corning. Su-Wei has won 13 ITF singles titles and nearly $400,000 in prize money. Earlier this month, she made it to the fourth round of the Australian Open before losing to Justine Henin... Another name which may not be familiar to the casual tennis fan but which may soon be is Sesil Karatantcheva, who will be entered into the DCTC as a wild card. Now 18, Karatantcheva, of Bulgaria, climbed as high as 35th in the world by age 16 before being found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs following a win over Venus Williams in the French Open... Among them is 26-year-old Laura Granville of Chicago, a three-time finalist at Midland and the No. 92 player in the world... Another familiar face at this year's DCTC will be 37-year-old Brenda Schultz-McCarthy, long regarded as the hardest server in the women's game.
"I was playing at Madison Square Garden and I had the day off," she recalled. "Some kids had committed suicide and they were worried about cluster suicides, so I went and visited these kids. These kids were my age (17), and I thought, 'They shouldn't be killing themselves.' "But when she got back to New York, public relations executives for the women's tour called Jaeger into the office. According to Jaeger, they chastised her for the unsponsored trip. "Somehow the story had reached The New York Times and the tour's PR people were angry," she said. "They thought I made the rest of the players look bad. They threw a newspaper at me - it hit me right in the chest - and said, 'What do you think you're doing?' "
A year later, her career came unglued at the 1984 French Open when she blew out her shoulder. "My injury was, in a strange way, a blessing," Jaeger said. "I had a tremendous natural athletic gift and instincts, but I wouldn't do anything to win like so many others. For whatever reason, God said, 'This one is not going to get ruined by sports. I'm going to take her.' " Jaeger quit the game, sold her Mercedes and invested her $1.4 million in earnings and her entire pension into what has become the Little Star Foundation.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
The world's sexiest tennis player, who will be making her second appearance at the Dubai Tennis Championships next month, is, however, upset at the behaviour of her semi-final victim Daniela Hantuchova, who called her sporting nature into question after the match when she accused Ivanovic of putting her off with squeaky shoes."I was disappointed to hear that. I thought we played a great match and I'm a little hurt that she made those comments, which were completely untrue. I think this shows how difficult it is to be friends with other tennis players," she told XPRESS following a barbecue party in Melbourne for her uncle's birthday on Saturday, which helped take her mind away from what had happened in the final.
"It was a lovely evening. There were many people there and we all had a good time. They cooked many different meats and there was even some singing," she said before reverting back to her on-court exploits.
Prominent tennis player Thomas Johansson will jet into South Africa to take part in the SAA Tennis Open at Selborne Park in East London next month... Like countryman Jonas Bjorkman, who will also be in action in East London, Johansson owns a property at Pezula in the Southern Cape.Websites
The wall at the entrance to the middle school is decorated with larger-than-life photos of Nelson Mandela, aviator Amelia Earhart, and the Rev.Martin Luther King - each with an appropriate quotation. At one end of the line-up is a much smaller color photo of Andre, sliding into a shot on the red clay of Roland Garros."One of the few fights Perry and I got into was over that picture," Andre said. "He wanted me on the wall, and I said, 'Yeah, right - me, right next to Nelson Mandela'. But Perry insisted that the school with my name ought to be associated with a face and an idea - that people ought to know that difference-making people are real, and while the kids would never got to meet Earhardt or Dr. King, they could see me, right there among them. So I relented."
..."I can train every day on my terms. I still spend a lot of time with Gil, (Reyes, Agassi’s long-time trainer); we go to the gym and lift together. I can play tennis, but not with someone hitting balls that demand a quick reaction. I won’t lunge and don’t put my body through the rotational demands. I can go hard, but there is a recovery issue now. If I go hard snowboarding, or during training in the desert, at some point I notice that feeling – that little golf ball in my back. So I slow down, because I know where that leads."
Andre's respect for Roger Federer hasn't dimmed since he left the tour. [H]e told me: "Fed has a strike zone that goes from the ankles above his head, but it also goes from just behind his body to a foot and a half in front. I had a strike zone from my ankles to my shoulders, but I always hit the ball just in front of me, and when it got behind me, I hit an entirely different kind of shot. The question is, can you teach what Fed does? The only thing I know for sure is that he’s making the game better."
After spending a few days with Lindsay and her husband, Jon, at their home in Orange County, the two of us drove down here together on Tuesday afternoon. Funny the paths that life takes us on: Now, not only were we loading racket bags into the car, but diapers, formula and strollers as well. Jagger took the ride with us, sleeping most of the way as his mom and I chatted up front about the latest headlines.For Harkleroad, this is her first time on a Fed Cup team; for Granville, her second. Both have been playing well recently and hope to take that confidence into the weekend. For me, I have never hidden the fact that I love playing in this competition. I couldn't have been happier when our captain, Zina Garrison, gave me the call again, and I couldn't be prouder. Another new addition is our new coach, Mary Jo Fernandez. MJ and I have played on several Fed Cup teams together, as well as against each other numerous times while on tour. She will make a fantastic coach when she takes the reins from Garrison next year.
On the other side of the court is the German team, which consists of Tatjana Malek, Julia Görges, Sabine Lisicki and Anna-Lena Grönefeld. This is a young, but very hungry, group of women. Coming into the tie, they look like the underdogs on paper. But Fed Cup is one of the most unpredictable competitions out there, so you can never be so sure.
"To some degree I felt the breath of Rafa for a long time on my neck," Federer said. "It's been a tough couple of years trying to lift your game. You don't stay number one just winning a couple of tournaments and playing well in a couple of Grand Slams. I think you always have to rise again to the occasion and try to prove yourself again. Nothing really changes in that sense: someone will win a tournament and eventually someone will catch up. I try to make that as difficult as possible. People were talking like I lost in the second round, but under the circumstances, having been sick and having not played a tournament before [the Australian Open], I was happy with the result.""I was thinking a lot in November and December after the Pete exhibitions [about a coach] and I was just going through who are the possible people I can imagine working with," Federer said. "At the moment I am traveling with our Davis Cup captain and he's going to come to Dubai in February and he's helping me out a lot. But still I am going to sit down in February and discuss who are the possibilities, but I have my doubts it is someone who can do the traveling and is very experienced. Maybe I will just have Severine and that's what it is going to look like. We'll see how it goes and maybe I'll decide again in February."
..."I didn't want to abuse him in a way and try to use him like a coach," Federer said. "I realized what a great volleyer he is; I don't even come close to his volleys and today he'd still be one of the top two or three volleyers on the tour. It shows what you can do if you have a solid technique. You can wake him up at two in the morning and he can hit a monster serve because he is so fluid and his whole technique is so smooth. He reminded me so much of myself and that's something I never get on tour."
Unless the knee injury which forced him to pull out of Britain’s suicide Davis Cup mission to Argentine proves to be more troublesome than expected, Andy Murray will also be in the mix by the time the big ATP Masters Series events come round in March and April. His first round loss to Tsonga in Melbourne obviously looks a great deal more respectable now. Big Jo was probably the only unseeded player in the tournament that Murray would not have overcome with comparative ease and there is no doubt that the Scot has the ability to move up in to the top six very soon.But to take a look back, I think I can safely say that few Australian Opens have been as satisfying and enjoyable as the one we have just witnessed. The weather behaved itself; the matches got more interesting with every round and the crowds were unbelievable. The 62,885 who turned up over two sessions on the first Thursday now stands as an all time Grand Slam record for a single day while the total attendance — over 50,000 up on 2007 — cracked 600,000 for the first time. Add that to the 715,000 attendance which broke records at the U.S. Open and it should become impossible to talk of tennis as anything other than a major international sport. The media outside of the United States certainly treat it that way. As I flew back through the Middle East, picking up local publications like The Straits Times in Singapore and the Gulf News in Dubai en route, one found tennis splashed across three or four broadsheet pages in virtually every newspaper. Tiger Woods’ return to the golf tour was, for once, very much a secondary item.
The line-up for the first semi-final in our quest to find the Greatest Sportsman in the world has been completed with Roger Federer joining Ronaldinho, Ronnie O'Sullivan and Sebastien Loeb. An enormous 33,000 votes were cast - 57% of which went the way of Croat handball superstar Ivano Balic. Whilst Federer was dumped out of the Australian Open in the semi-finals, Balic was leading his country to the final of the European Championships. But we think it was the half-page spread in a Zagreb newspaper and a strong nationalist fervour that earned Balic more votes than any other man in the competition so far.However, Federer gained 32% of the vote and with his unanimous first place vote amongst the experts, he edges out Balic who was third behind Ole Einar Bjoerndalen in the votes cast by our trio of sages
Wires
American Serena Williams has pulled out of the Paris Open women's tennis tournament starting on Monday because she needs dental surgery, organisers said on Friday.
There is no other option than to quit," Johansson told the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet's Web site (www.svd.se)."The doctors have said that nothing except a very long period of rest will work and long rest will not work for what I have intended to do and the goals I set up to achieve."
"During the last month I underwent all kinds of examinations and the doctors say not even another operation will help me," added Johansson, whose last major appearance was playing for Sweden in their semi-final loss to the United States in the Davis Cup in September.
BRITISH PRESS
ISL, which also had marketing contracts with the International Olympic Committee and men's tennis tour, the ATP, had brokered the sale of television rights for the 2002 World Cup to the Brazilian broadcaster O Globo on behalf of Fifa but the world governing body's money went missing. It was allegedly diverted into a bank account for the use of ISL executives - among them ISL's former chairman, Jean-Marie Weber - who will stand trial and, if convicted, could be hit with 10-year jail sentences.
Great Britain's Davis Cup team stand accused of amateurism today after Alex Bogdanovic arrived at their training camp for next week's tie in Argentina without an adequate number of rackets.Bogdanovic, 23, suddenly found himself the No 1 singles pick after Andy Murray withdrew with a knee injury and quickly owned up to the fact he did not have enough rackets to prepare for the tie.
...Since British junior Marcus Willis, the 17-year-old junior from Berkshire, was sent home from the Australian Open two weeks ago when he turned up for practice without his rackets, Bogdanovic's error represents a new low for the British game.
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