It was a thrilling match in Stanford, from all that I could tell by watching the electronic scoreboard. Dominika Cibulkova won the first set, 7-6, and was up 5-2 in the second. Then her opponent, Ai Sugiyama, held, and proceeded to break Cibulkova when she served for the match at 5-3. Cibulkova had three match points on Sugiyama's next serve, but Sugiyama saved them all, the set went to a tiebreak, and Sugiyama won it. Cibulkova went up a break in the third set, but was broken back. Then Sugiyama broke again.
What I was unable to see by looking at the scoreboard was that Cibulkova began cramping at some point in the third. The cramping became so terrible that she actually had to retire when Sugiyama was up 5-3, 40-0 in the third set. That is some bad cramping.
I like both of these players a lot, and would have been glad for either of them to win (though it's always nice to see the veteran Sugiyama show her stuff), but it's sad to know that someone lost because of terrible pain. She did have her chance, though, in the second set.
Sugiyama def. Cibulkova, 6-7, 7-6, 6-3
Is there a letter writing campaign and boycott for the WTA, Nike, and Prince now that Ashley H. has done her sexpot photo spread in Playboy? I'm really confused about the things I need to do to be a good tennis fan these days.
ReplyDeleteI doubt it, Anon. If you check around the boards, Harkleroad was just "expressing herself." Showing her "power."
ReplyDeleteAshley Harkleroad has a right to do what she did. But it's pretty strange, coming from a woman who complained about all the sexism in marketing the WTA. However, "hypocrite" has only three syllables, so I'm sure it's a word Harkleroad knows.
Gone are the days--my days--when such a thing would not have occurred.
I heard that Harkleroad said that Playboy was a "classy" publication. Right. The organization was founded by a man who, for all his talk about the liberation of female sexuality (which he insists was not on the Second Wave feminist agenda--big news to me--I was there), is also the founder of the Playboy Clubs. Those are the clubs where mandatory "gynecological exams" were done on Bunnies, room keys were forced down their bodices by "patrons," and the Bunnies were pressured at all times to "date" important clients. To this day, Hefner denies that any of this went on, though it was all well documented by Gloria Steinem.
That makes Hefner not only an oppressor, but a liar.
The only entity to whom you can complain is Harkleroad herself. But don't expect much company. Her apologists think we are "prudes" to complain. And her critics think that what she did was "cheap"--itself a sexist complaint.