!Picby Pete Bodo
We've been focusing on the pearls of wisdom dropping from the lips of players who won their early-round matches, timed so you have the pleasure of reading their words on the day they play again. But let's start today with one of the better cut-to-the-chase reactions of a woman who lost, Bethanie Mattek-Sands. She was taken down Wednesday in a pretty ugly match by her countrywoman Sloane Stephens (more from her later), who now goes on to play Mathilde Johansson—not the worst imaginable assignment in the third round of Roland Garros.
Anyway, shortly after achieving her career-high ranking of No. 30 last July, Mattek-Sands was knocked out by a shoulder injury that caused her to miss almost the entire second half of the season, leaving her with a current ranking of no. 167. After the Stephens match, a reporter played the injury card, asking if anything was still wrong physically. To which she replied:
Bravo. Now let's move on to the triumphant.
—Honest-to-a-fault Nicolas Mahut, who plays Roger Federer in round three, was asked, tongue firmly planted in the cheek of his interlocutor, "Could you tell us something about your next opponent?" He answered:
Apart from being quite the philosopher (losing a match 70-68 in the fifth might do that to a fella), Mahut became the 123rd consecutive French player to use the word "beautiful" in his press conference. I believe the record for most frequent use of the word in a single press conference still belongs to Yannick Noah, who employed it 23 times after a second-round win on a rainy day in Paris.
—And speaking of the French, Victoria Azarenka was asked, after her win over Dinah Pfizenmaier, about the high number of French nationals in her camp ("consultant" Amelie Mauresmo having been the latest French person to jump on board). Vika explained:
I'm not sure Azarenka is on the short list to take over the chair in the French Studies department at Harvard, but it's a start.
—In the ridiculous-to-the-sublime department, Anabel Medina Garrigues apparently made a common hand gesture employed by surfers upon winning her match with Irena Pavlovic. An inquisitive reporter who quite clearly hasn't shredded any rollers lately imitated her gesture and asked, "What does it mean?" Medina Garrigues answered (neglecting to preface her reply with "Dude,"): "It's surfer, what surfers do when it's like. . . " she trailed off, muttering in Spanish.
The reporter pressed on, "It comes from a music group or something like that?"
—Between questions about hand gestures, Francophile leanings, the precise color of Rafael Nadal's shirt, etc. etc., you have to really keep your ears open and eyes peeled if you want to catch some useful knowledge about how the game is actually played. Novak Djokovic provided one valuable, subtle observation when he was asked about the high quality of his return. He said:
—Reporters aren't famous for being tactful, so it was hardly surprising when the first question posed to Ana Ivanovic after she posted a quality 6-2, 6-2 win over Shahar Peer was whether being shunted off to an outside court, and then doing her press conference in one of the smaller interview rooms, takes "a lot of pressure off your shoulders." Ever-sunny Ana took the remark in stride:
Anybody else find Ana more and more refreshing as time goes on?
