How Do You Say "Cheerleader" in Russian?
Fed Cup has always played second fiddle to Davis Cup, and for good reason. For most of its history, Fed Cup has been both poorly promoted and deeply uninteresting—the latter partly because of the chronic lack of depth in the women’s game. In fact, Fed Cup headlines are more apt to be made by controversies (see “C” for Capriati, or “K” for King, as in Billie Jean King, who kicked Capriati off the team during a tie in the spring of 2002) than intriguing clashes, a point that was underscored last fall when Anastasia Myskina made it abundantly clear that she did not want to see Maria Sharapova on the Russian squad.
The catfight has been raging ever since, with the conventional wisdom holding that the Moscow clique (Myskina, Elena Dementieva, and Svetlana Kuznetsova) is bent on freezing out Sharapova. It’s partly because of the obnoxious—and ubiquitous—presence of Sharapova’s dad, Yuri; unlike players from the rest of the world, the Russian girls are in a position to know exactly how much Yuri gets away with, vis-à-vis on-court coaching, etc.
But the Russian girls also feel a twinge of contempt and a measure of cynical resentment toward Sharapova for following the Anna Kournikova model—abandoning Mother Russia at the first opportunity in order to train in the U.S. and become a de-facto American. Worse yet, the approach clearly works—each ex-pat girl was a media star long before her results set her apart from the pack.
And it’s not like Myskina or Dementieva are chopped liver in the looks department, either.
It looks like Sharapova won’t be playing Fed Cup this year, either, if this borderline hilarious story from the Russian news agency, Novotsi, is accurate. (Come on, Vladi, stop bugging Maria with all those calls and get to work finding those missing nukes!) {The link has been taken down. Apologies. - PB}
Meanwhile, Tennis-X sneeringly suggests that the Russian Tennis Federation’s party line (that Sharapova was not invited to be on the squad) is a lame attempt to save face after being rebuffed by Sharapova. That’s plausible, but not as persuasive as the theory that the Moscow homegirls put together a united front and demanded, “It’s either her or us.”
So, was she frozen out or did she snub the team?
Will this story never end? Not happily.