TENNIS-X NEWS, NOTES, QUOTES AND BARBS
THE MOST ACTIVE RETIRED PLAYER EVER — So Martina Hingis is the only designated World TeamTennis “marquee” player who will play all 14 matches for a team this summer, and at Wimbledon is playing “senior” doubles with Anna Kournikov? Just come out of retirement for the third time already and play some Grand Slam singles, and doubles with Kournikova. You can’t deny the “Spice Girls”! then do a double-spread for Playboy. Do it while you’re still hot.
ADHEREL
THE PARAKEET IS DEAD! PUT ON THE GAS MASKS! — Here is a strange note from Richard Evans at FOX Sports reporting from Madrid: “Footnote: After their supper, Isner and Querrey went out to Court Six and, on a miserably dank and chilly evening, lost to the expert doubles team of Lukasz Kubot and Oliver Marach 6-0, 3-6, and 10-4 in the doubles tie break. At least they won’t be able to blame the food. Every day, a professional food taster munches his way through every dish. “We want to make absolutely sure the players don’t get sick,” said tournament director Manolo Santana who played on the tour in the days when everything was a little less scientific.
‘IF FANS JUST CARED MORE I WOULD WIN’ — Peter Bodo writing for ESPN.com on the sorry state of no player taking the reigns at the top in women’s tennis: “The WTA is lucky that the French Open is coming up, because people care about Grand Slam events. But we’ve seen this spring how little most fans on the Continent care about women’s tennis in general, even when a few of the stars show up to play — and lose. I’m convinced one of the reasons they lose is because it’s obvious that even the few-dozen people who turn out to watch their matches hardly care.” — So let us get this straight, the top players lose because…they think no one cares? That’s probably news to them. Best line from the story’s comment section: “The WTA motto: Where beautiful women play ugly tennis.”
MISC: How odd that when Serena and Venus Williams move to No. 1 and 2 in the world respectively (for the first time in seven years), it is at a time when they are both taking weeks in a row of bad losses — Serena blowing match points and losing in early rounds, Venus getting bageled by opponents — not a great descriptor of how strong the WTA Tour is right now…After getting married to a marque cricket (corrected) player who had previously agreed to marry someone else over the phone, India’s Sania Mirza says she will return to WTA Tour competition during the grasscourt season…Kim Clijsters is out of the French Open due to her ankle injury sustained a couple weeks ago; also missing the French are Juan Martin del Potro, Nikolay Davydenko, James Blake, David Nalbandian, Gilles Simon, Urszula Radwanska, Sania Mirza, Anna-Lena Groenefeld, Sabine Lisicki, Tommy Haas and Igor Andreev…Rafael Nadal wearing a half-million dollar watch while he plays is like — we can’t even think of a bad analogy. Rafa you need to re-take your personality, change that BAD Nike outfit and go back to the sleeveless, and generally be Rafa again instead of whatever marketing machine they’re trying to mold you into…Wimbledon named an “official poet” and we didn’t even know it…or care…World Tennis Magazine reports that Tennis Magazine and Tennis.com editor James Martin has left his position to become a soccer writer for ESPN.com? World Cup fever, catch it!
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