I'm not sure if everyone's aware of this, but Wimbledon is happening right now as we speak. As an avid tennis player and fan, this event normally captivates my attention throughout the fortnight it is played. But this year I have boycotted watching tennis. I refuse to advocate the vicious travesty that is women's tennis. That's right, tennis will have to do without my ratings until they let Anna Kournikova win a tournament.
For those of you who don't know who Anna Kournikova is, allow me to lead you by the hand out of the freaking cave you live in and into the real world. Currently ranked 19th in the world, this blond-haired, brown-eyed, nineteen-year-old temptress glides along the baseline (and through adolescent males' dreams) with the grace of a figure skater. Unfortunately, she couldn't win a tournament to save her life. Not once in her career as a professional tennis player has she stood in the winner's circle of a singles tournament. Kim Clijsters, Patricia Wartusch, even Rita Kuti Kis, have won tournaments and yet none of them garner a smidgen of the following that Miss Kournikova has in every corner of the globe. Something is wrong with these world when we allow this to happen.
In order to fix this problem, rather than to simply criticize Kournikova and her entourage, this author proposes that the Women's Tennis Association fix all of Kournikova's matches so that she wins more tournaments. In this scenario, everyone comes out on top. Kournikova gets more titles, us fans get to see more of her, and tennis critics can stop their banter over the amount of attention she receives. For instance, last Monday a man streaked her doubles match at Wimbledon with "Only the balls should bounce" -- the slogan for the new sports bras Kournikova is endorsing (which if you haven't seen an ad for, you simply haven't lived) -- written on his chest. This man obviously isn't a criminal, just a distressed fan who is worried that because Kournikova lost her second round singles match to unheard of Anne-Gaelle Sidot he won't get to see her in action. Understandable, no?
In all honesty though, Kournikova has been the biggest disappointment on the professional tennis tour since the Reebok Pump shoe. Injuries, impatient play and off the court drama have all kept her teetering on the brink of disaster from the day she turned professional in 1995. She was ranked as high as 10th in 1998, but fell into the mid-30s at the end of 1999 due to injury. Also contributing to her fall in 1999 was that she broke off her three-year courtship with Sergei Fedorov of the Detroit Red Wings. When they started dating he was 25, she was 15 if my teenage daughter ever brought home a guy ten years her elder, the proverbial sh-- would have hit the fan let me tell you. Currently she is dating Florida Panthers star Pavel Bure.
But back to tennis; with so many young kids turning pro at ages 14 and 15 tennis is ripe for phenom burnout. Kournikova needs to step back from the game and look at other examples of teenage tennis stars and how they handled their fame. Jennifer Capriati and her motel room cocaine binge: bad. The Williams sisters and Martina Hingis: good. In order to propel her game to the next level Kournikova must realize that she is a tennis player first and a drama queen second.
Besides, if Kournikova begins to show a little more commitment to her game, the WTA might cut her a break and begin participating in the little match-fixing idea I had earlier. Because let's face it, a serious boost to the ratings would occur if the WTA simply put all of Kournikova's matches on television, or even start an entire Anna Kournikova channel (oohh if only I ran the WTA). This may sound a bit superficial, but watching Lindsay Davenport and Conchita Martinez just isn't doing it for me anymore. Don't get me wrong, I think they're great tennis players and deserve media coverage, just in order to get it they'll have to be playing Kournikova.
So here it is, one last plea to both Anna Kournikova and the WTA. First to Kournikova: please don't end up like Jennifer Capriati. All you have to do is work on your game, become a better tennis player, dump Pavel Bure and get with me. Now for the WTA: I'm not watching tennis until she wins, that's final. Do whatever you have to do, put her in every final, play her on a tour for third graders, juice the ball just do it on television so we can watch. That would suit us male tennis fans just fine. Because right now the only Kournikova we are seeing is on the Internet when we download pictures, not when she is on television playing tennis.
