SOME PEOPLE SPREAD THEIR WINGS, OTHERS SPREAD THEIR TOES: When asked what she learned physically during her long recovery from a foot injury, Vika Azarenka said, “I had no idea how to spread my toes.”
HAIR WE ARE: After Caroline Wozniacki‘s hair got caught in her racket during her second-round match, an ESPN commentator said, “She got Rory [McIlroy] out of her hair, now she needs to get her racket out of her hair.” A few other things also came to mind:
• The best quote about hair in the history of tennis was Ivan Lendl‘s comment about the young and flashy Andre Agassi. Lendl said that Agassi was nothing but “a haircut and a forehand.”
• Perhaps no tennis player has been more associated with hair than Agassi. For a long time, unbeknownst to the public, he wore a mullet toupee.
• There’ve been many great hair accessories in tennis, including Bjorn Borg‘s and Pat Cash‘s headbands, but probably no accessory has been more distinctive than the beads the young Venus and Serena wore early in their careers. They still managed to score big wins despite carrying the extra weight, but soon after Venus’s beads fell to the court in Australia, they did away with them.
• Argentine doubles specialist Mariano Hood said his positive drug test was due to the treatment he was taking for hair loss.
• When the bald Andre Agassi teased Andy Roddick during an exhibition, asking him, “Let’s see what you got, big boy,” Andy cruelly replied, “Hair.”
• Agassi once confided, “I feel old when I see mousse in my opponent’s hair.”
• Asked to describe the definitive memory of her career, Tracy Austin said, “Probably my pigtails.”
• When Bjorn Borg snubbed his own induction ceremony into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, citing a mysterious previous commitment, columnist Charles Pierce speculated that Borg was “perhaps too busy washing his hair.”
• During Casey Dellacqua’s 2008 surprise run at the Australian Open, her endearing over-the-top granny madly cheered and cried while wearing her nation’s flag in her hair.
• Serena played a hairstylist on the WE Channel show Hair Trauma.
VANIA’S SONG: In press conferences, Inside Tennis is always seeking different answers, whether they’re in-depth replies or unconventional ones. So, deep in the presser with Vania King, who lost to Serena Williams in the second round, we said to King, “You are known for having one of the best voices in tennis, if you could work with us here and choose a song that expresses a match, what would that would be?”
She thought for a moment and began singing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” with its great opening lyric, “Fish got to swim, birds got to fly / I’ve got love one man ’til a die,” but then said, no, the song was too slow. After hesitating, she switched to Peggy’s Lee classic “Fever,” with its immortal lines, “Never know how much I love you / Never know how much I care / When you put your arms around me / I get a fever that’s so hard to bear.”
GUESS WHO’S BACK? For years there has been talk of it happening, and now it is: former teen prodigy Nicole Vaidisova, now 25, appears to be returning to the game. The former world No. 7 is on the entry list for a $75,000 ITF circuit event in Albuquerque.
PINK DRESSES, HOT FLASHES: On the Tennis Channel, Gigi Fernandez recalled the curious fact that legend Tracy Austin still fit into the celebrated pink pinafore-like dress she wore when she was 14, quickly adding, “That made every menopausal woman in America angry.”
THINK BACKHAND: Mary Joe Fernandez said, “If I were a coach, I would tell my player on the WTA tour to always pass on the backhand side.”
HEADLINES:
• SERENA-TY NOW! WILLIAMS’ GREATNESS NOT FULLY APPRECIATED
• WHAT CANADA CAN TEACH AMERICA
BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS: Only three American men reached the second round of the US Open, the worst start since the beginning of the Open Era. But 12 US women made it to the second round—the most since ’01.
GO FIGURE: In the second round American hopefuls Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys hit a combined total of 123 unforced errors … Grigor Dimitrov and Milos Raonic are 1-24 collectively against Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer.
GRIGORMANIA: After a short time spent dispatching his third-round opponent with the loss of just five games at Louis Armstrong Stadium, Grigor Dimitrov spent a long time signing autographs court-side for a mass of kids whose squeals of “Grigor!” grew ever louder. “You’re gonna win the whole tournament!” one yelled in an attempt to get his attention.
QUOTEBOOK:
“I see him against Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, probably the two most popular players in the world, and he doesn’t always get a fair deal form the crowd.”—Boris Becker on Novak Djokovic, to CNN.
“Sometimes Federer is not that kind of player, like Rafael Nadal, who fights on each and every point … I don’t want to say that it is easier to face Roger than it is to face Nadal, but surely Federer decides to give his best if and when he is pushed by his opponent.”—Sam Groth, Federer’s second-round opponent.
JO-WILLY—MASTER OF METAPHOR: Fresh from a title run in Canada, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is being touted by many as a US Open title contender. In a New York Times piece by Christopher Clarey, he also revealed a flair for metaphor. “To be able to win this tournament, you can’t wait for the little window to climb through,” he said. “You have to build yourself a big door and walk through it, because there is no luck in this milieu … I don’t believe that winning a Slam is possible because the others aren’t here … I don’t have any desire to win my Grand Slam by coming in through the little window.”
YOU DON’T SAY? When Sam Querrey was asked to talk about the similarities and differences between 17-time Slam winners Roger Federer and Serena Williams, he replied, “I mean, one is a man and one is a woman.”
TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL: Asked about her next opponent, young Serb Aleksandra Krunic, who upset Madison Keys, big-hitting Petra Kvitova said, “I know that she can push a lot of balls back. [Keys] really tired to show her best … Krunic is just pushing all the balls back, so it’s very difficult to [hit] a winner.”
IT’S TOO EASY BEING GREEN: After her second-round loss, where she was penalized by the ump for touching the net with her racket, Coco Vandeweghe said the official was guilty of “bush league, freshman, green-skin stuff.”
(IT contributors: John Huston, Lucia Hoffman)
