I caught the end of the women’s finals on the French Open, and had seen rebroadcasts of the semifinals, and while watching them I couldn’t help but notice that Myksina and Dementieva both have fashion model figures – lanky and so forth, and with a little plastic surgery (nose jobs in both cases, maybe some work on the jawline for Myksina) they could both be “TV beautiful” if you know what I mean, getting them all sorts of product endorsement money.
When you think of how far Anna Kournikova has gone with so much less tennis success, it seems like a gimme.
Also, what’s with all the unforced errors Serena Williams made against Capriati, and all the unforced errors Capriati then made against Myksina? The play was just embarrassingly bad. If I’d bet money on the match I’d have been screaming “She’s taking a dive! She’s taking a dive! Call a Nevada boxing commissioner!”
I agree with the first point. Those girls are cute.
But taking a dive?
Tiger Woods has shot double bogeys. John Elway threw interceptions. The Soviet hockey team lost. Doesn’t matter how dominant someone is in a given sport, sometimes they make mistakes and lose.
The Russian beauty just happened to be able to capitalise on the mistakes of her competittion.
I’m not saying they really took a dive, and it Williams lost to Capriati, not a Russian. It’s jsut the play was WAY before Capriati and Williams’ usual level of excellence. Don’t know if they didn’t eat their Wheaties or what, but those were really ugly tennis matches.
Have you seen Myskina’s nose? It’s pretty darn big. No way has she had it worked on. If it’s weird, I would wager that’s because (like the commentators said during the match) she’s part Asian. I forget if it was half or a quarter. In any case, they’re not even close to the only skinny gals on the tour. Serena and Jennifer are exceptions. Have you ever seen
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Daniella Hantuchova? Quite good-looking, but she’s gotten unnaturally thin and it’s damaged her game severely. They’re calling her the Slovakian Skeleton now.
She’s much more traditionally attractive than either of them.
A lot of errors are par for the course for both of them, just as it is for most of the women who slug the ball that way. They just usually hit enough winners to make up the difference, and serve their opponents off the court. Once in a while it doesn’t happen that way.
Positively horrible. The final wasn’t any better.
Like everybody who does that, you’d have been doing so because you lost money, not because you were right. Nothing that happened in those matches was out of character. Even when Serena is playing well, she makes large numbers of errors, just like Venus, Capriati and Davenport do. Like I said, her advantages in size, speed and power are normally enough for her to overcome the mistakes. But sometimes it’s not. For Serena, the problem was that she was playing a top-level opponent and she has hardly played in the last nine months. For Capriati, I’m not so sure. Maybe she thought that since she’d beaten Serena, the tournament was hers and all she had to do was show up.
I didn’t say otherwise. What I did say was that Myskina capitalised on her opponent’s mistakes.
Ugly, lackluster matches? Yeah, pretty much. But, bottom line is that this girl is the one who outlasted everyone and everything else. She made a lot of unforced errors herself. Difference for her? She came back with solid, basic play to win back points she lost.
IMO, Demetieava had a prettier style of play. Her points won looked more dramatic. But, damn if she wasn’t a half step behind on about 3/4s of the match.
Why did the high ranked players do so poorly? Like Marly said, I’m guessing. Usually the shear force and speed speed of the volleys and serves far make up for all their mistakes. This time, it didn’t happen. Ecclesiastes 9:11
Well, clay is a surface on which steady, smart, methodical play is rewarded, and pure, physical ability isn’t. Add to that the fact that most of the top American tennis pros don’t play on clay often (while Europeans and South Americans do), and it’s not all that surprising that relatively unheralded Russians and Argentinians are outperforming more famous players at the French Open.
Excellent point, astorian. I hadn’t thought of that.
Now, to fashion! I thought that the styles both Russians were wearing were quite nice. They blended practical use with pleasing lines. Their Paris Hilton type figures were well accented by the cuts and tucks of their cute outfits.
Not that I disagree with what astorian said, but to add a little:
In my opinion, there is a tremendous gulf in women’s tennis right now. The top few players (Serena, Venus, Henin, and Clijsters, with Capriati still barely hanging on because nobody else has taken her place) can absolutely kick the crap out of everybody else. That group is basically guaranteed to make the fourth round of any Slam without breaking a sweat, and usually most of them will make the semifinals. Basically, after you get past that top five, the tenth-ranked player might as well be the 100th. They’re very interchangeable and few have a chance of beating the best players, who compete for all the big prizes.
But not this time. This tournament was The Perfect Storm for the top-ranked women. Serena and Venus were coming off injuries. They don’t play enough to begin with, which makes them more injury-prone, but Venus missed about six months last year, and Serena missed eight. They haven’t yet worked their way back into shape, though they were easily good enough to beat their first few opponents. Clijsters was hurt and skipped the tournament (she’d made the last two finals). Henin-Hardenne, who won last year, was on a huge roll from the US Open into Australia, but she got very sick and hasn’t recovered, so she lost early on. Davenport is still better than most and she’s probably healthy, but she’s lacked motivation lately and she’s near the end of her career; she’ll be 28 in a few days.
That knocks out the ENTIRE top tier except for Capriati. What happend to her? She probably took things for granted. Like the press said, after she beat Serena it was her tournament to win. She’s won it before, she may have thought it was in the bag. Instead, she lost to Myskina, who’s been in the top ten for a good while now but is definitely second-tier unless she decides she wants to be more.
You misunderstand my point. I’m saying Myksina and Dementieva both NEED nose jobs, and Myksina could probably use some jaw work. Wouldn’t cost much and could pull in some lucrative endorsement contracts, as per Kournikova.
Haven’t seen her. Definitely something weird going on there. Being in shape for top-level tennis affects different people in different ways – look at the difference between Capriati with that fireplug torso, and Venus Williams with those huge thighs and ropy arms on a lanky frame, and Myskina, whose figure is runway-esque – all of them clearly in topnotch condition. So I can’t say for sure if something weird is going on with Hantuchova.
I have seen Capriati play on several previous occasions, and they’ve never done this badly. Every other point they lost was a clearly unforced error. I guess you are saying that the slow clay courts let the less forceful players return more serves, keeping the ball in play longer and giving the serve and volley types more chances to fuck up. Maybe so, but I’ve never seen it happen to the same extent at, say, Wimbledon, which also had kind of a slow surface.
Sorry, you’re right. But no female tennis player wants to be compared to Kournikova - something that is somewhat inevitalbe these days if the player is a) pretty or b) Russian. Even if it means losing endorsement money. Kournikova became a joke when the hype overshadowed her playing, and then of course she retired young without ever winning a damn thing. These women would rather be good tennis players. Myskina achieved more in this one tournament than Anna did in her whole career.
I can’t either. A lot of people think she has an eating disorder. She was in the top ten last year, now she’s number 50… the WTA site lists her at 5’11 1/4" and 123 pounds. DAMN…
That’s exactly what happens. Clay slows the ball down and makes it bounce higher, which reduces the advantage the Capriati and the Williamses have. They’re not serve and volley players- they could be if they wanted to, but I don’t think there are any women who do that anymore. They’re just big servers.
Grass is the opposite, especially in the early parts of the tournament when the grass is fresh. The ball stays low and goes very fast. That’s part of why Sampras won Wimbledon all the time, players with a big serve have a huge advantage.
