Todd Rich, a regular reader from Ohio, writes:
Well, Todd, that’s a tough one to answer as I haven’t weighed Serena recently, but your letter does raise an interesting point, which is the accuracy of the WTA media guide and other “official” publications or player guides. It’s long been a favorite pastime in some quarters to take the WTA media guide and parse it for those little, well, apparent inaccuracies that sometimes pop up. Serena isn’t exactly breaking new ground here.
Usually, the seeming discrepancy is a little matter of an inch or two added by a short player—perhaps on the strength of the rationalization, If the other girls realize that in the eyes of the state I’m officially a dwarf, that would give them an unacceptable psychological edge!. It can also be an inch of height shaved off by an unusually tall one . . .Our superficial society stigmatizes women over 6 feet tall so horribly that I’m going to protest by putting down 5-foot-9!
In some cases, a few pounds get lost in the e-mail, sometimes by virtue of foresight . . .Well, by the time the media guide is actually published, I’ll have lost twenty pounds anyway . . .. At other times—check that. There is no known record of a female tennis player weighing less than her reported heft in the media guide, except for the odd, unfortunate soul suffering from anorexia nervosa.
I don’t know what solution we could devise to fix this flaw in the system (it’s kind of like letting kids take a math test on the “honor” system, which usually means, “Are the answers written honor sleeve, or honor wrist?”).
I suppose the tour could have mandatory pre-tournament weigh-ins, à la boxing, where the fighters stand around in their underwear, glowering at each other, until the actual weighing takes place, closely followed by the obligatory brawl involving one fighter, his rival’s manager, and at least two Mexican kids who just work for the caterer, but are tougher than either fighter and hope to impress the manager (and not the one lying face-down in the lasagna on the buffet table).
Now there’s a marketing idea, Larry! If Sharapova, Venus Williams, and Elena Dementieva enter a given event, just think of the attendance you’d have at your pre-tournament press conference and weigh-in! You might even be able to do away with the Goody Bags (one more zip-neck fleece in my closet and I’m going to make a pile of them all and strike a match. Ever see polyester burn? It looks like a mini-nuclear explosion, only brighter).
Post-post note: While I wrote this in the equivalent of an intellectual fit of doodling, some will invariably find it sexist. To that end, I feel obliged to note the interesting comment (below) by "Measurebymeasure" on similar shenanigans on the mens' tour.