First off, this outfit is awful. As a tennis fan, I mean. It’s crazy bad.

Luckily, I won’t be talking about it as a tennis fan …

The seven-time Grand Slam champ Venus Williams flashed the flesh a bit more than usual at Sunday’s opening round of the French Open. Well, it appeared that she flashed.Williams noted that her sheer shorts only gave the appearance of nudity. The look, she said, was all about “illusion.”

I could pretend I’m outraged by this outfit, but I’ve spent the better part of the last two decades hoping that well-toned women would appear naked in public and anyone who knows me, knows that any outrage I claim to have is purely hypocritical.

I could also compare the elder Williams to an inhabitant of the Moulin Rouge or a 19th century cancan dancer, but I won’t (unless, I just did). Instead I’d rather point out where this is all going (and where this is going, it’s gonna get weird).

To wit:

You laugh, but imagine if three years ago I told you that one of the greatest tennis players in the world were going to play a Masters dressed like Zorro’s girlfriend?

Don’t bet on seeing this French Madam’s outfit again in the current tournament. Williams usually packs 10 outfits to wear throughout Grand Slams.

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Williams photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via the AP

Jelena Jankovic beat Venus Williams like a child on Thursday. On Friday Rebel Jelena beat Venus’ sister like a slightly older child – a pre-teen boy, really.

World No.1 Serena Williams blamed the “apple in her throat” for her loss to No. 7 Jankovic at the Italian Open semis. “Choking,” “having a frog in one’s throat” or “butterflies in one’s stomach” are all common terms for being nervous, but a throat apple? Yeah, that’s an Adam’s apple; it means Williams’ voice is dropping (finally!)

They grow up (and out) so fast. Just a matter of time before she starts asking to borrow the family Hyundai.

While Serbia’s Weird Jel’ Jankovic now prepares to meet Spain’s Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez (and the rest of her surnames) in the tournament final round, Williams had to discuss her sudden bodily changes with the press. Soooo embarrassing. Gawd!

“I completely choked, I really should have won,” the 12-times grand slam champion told a news conference.

“I wasn’t unlucky. It was all on me. I think I had an apple in my throat.”

Williams really did choke. She was a point away from victory at 5-4 in the third set. It was worse than a 14-year-old boy asking a girl to the turnabout dance. The girls ask the guys, doofus!

As Williams found out Friday, it’s all a part of growing up.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr

Unfailingly, when I’m at a sporting event, I always wonder if stadium vendors get a sense of the action going on in front of them. Are they there because they’re fans of the home team? The sport? Drunks? The thrill of catching a foul ball in the back of the noggin? To get a sweet shoulder workout?

If you’ve been watching any of this week’s Rome Masters (and if you’re from the U.S., you probably haven’t been), you’ve noticed many of the stadium vendors settling almost all of my curiosities.

All over the tournament, various vendors during various matches can be seen poppin’ a squat during matches. Not in between matches while fans are filing out, and not squatting momentarily to count change so as not to block the view of fans sitting behind them.

Sitting. Chillin’. During play.

Frankly, I’m not sure what surprises me more: That a) I’ve never seen vendors do this before, b) they chose to take their break in the premium seats, c) there are apparently plenty of front row seats available during matches involving Federer or Verdasco (not pictured) or d) that I was able to come up with three things about tennis food vendors that shocked me.

Not too shabby.

The only thing left for me to ponder is how many cotton candy clumps vendors steal from the bags when no one’s looking.

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Kudos to Tennistoday for the screen caps

Extramarital affairs from American athletes are interesting in a “the-crazier-the-better” sort of way, but Asian extramarital affairs? Those are just plain educational. And literally extramarital – as in there’s an extra marriage in the mix.

To my point about these affairs being educational, did you know that Pakistani marriages may be legally executed over the phone? No, I didn’t think you did. Or that a “nikahnama” is a document binding two people in wedlock? Two for two.  How about the idea that when members of the opposite sex send pictures of themselves to people they’ve never seen, the pictures are often, um, less than reliable?

Oh, that you’ve heard of, huh? Well two-out-of-three ain’t bad.

Former Pakistan cricket captain Shoaib Malik has been enmeshed in an odd investigation into an alleged marriage to and Indian woman. It’s been well-publicized that Malik is engaged to tennis’  first Indian WTA tour title winner, Sania Mirza, but that’s not the Indian woman causing the investigation. Ayesha Siddiqui is the woman in question. Allegedly, he’s been married to her since 2002.

Mirza’s family must love the post cards she sends home.

“Dear family, so I’m wearing skirts in public these days. Best to you and yours.”

“Dear family, I decided not to marry my childhood friend after all.  Turns out I’ve met the captain of Pakistan’s cricket team and I fancy him a bit more. Nothing can go wrong there, I’m sure. Pet the cats for me.”

“Dear family, looks like Shoaib already married an Indian woman eight years ago. Also, my wrist just isn’t fully healed and my tennis career is floundering. Send kebabs.”

Siddiqui herself brought the tele-marriage to the public forefront last week, demanding a proper divorce before Malik’s marriage to Mirza. Either that or a ton of money from the lawsuit she threatened (which, if she won, would probably also end in a proper divorce).

So is Malik married?

Newspapers printed a copy of the alleged wedding 2002 agreement. It appeared to be signed by both Malik and Siddiqui, but not – as legally required – by any witnesses.

In an interview with The Times of India, Malik said he began a telephone relationship with Siddiqui in 2001 after she sent him photographs.

Malik admitted to the newspaper that in 2002 that he signed a “nikahnama” (wedding agreement) “thinking the girl I was marrying was the one in the photographs.”

But “the girl who was accepting the proposal was someone else,” he said, without giving further details.

In a bizarre twist, Malik claimed he had spent time with Ayesha Siddiqui’s “elder sister” who told him that Ayesha would not meet him as she had put on weight. Malik said he now believes the “sister” was actually Ayesha herself.

Chalk it up to cultural differences, but can you imagine the captain of any team on any professional sport in America messing around with a date offering nothing more than telephone conversations and some jpegs?

Siddiqui’s story, for her part, is that Malik refused to acknowledge the marriage not because he’d never actually met her, but because his cricket mates said she was too fat. Too fat to what, none of the reports were able to say.

Malik was scheduled to marry 23-year-old Mirza on April 15. Expect delays.

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Photos courtesy of Flickr

It’s hard to tell if I’m arguing against the masses or with them on this one. Mostly because as far as the Andre Agassi autobio meth / wig / daddy issues bombshells goes … well, it’s unclear who’s even paying attention.

Once you strip away the people that will buy the book from whence all this hubbub sprang, simply because hubbub sprung from it, it will be interesting to see what repercussions Agassi’s admittances will have. And because the statute of limitations states that Agassi can’t be touched for drug use and lies from over a decade ago, the repercussions will have to come from the court of public opinion.

The question for the public will inevitably be “should we care?”

And this is where it gets interesting.

Martina Navratilova thinks we should care. Thinks Agassi should have a few titles taken away. Thinks he’s a cheater and a liar.

“Shocking,” Navratilova said Thursday. “Not as much shock that he did it as shock he lied about it and didn’t own up to it. He’s up there with Roger Clemens, as far as I’m concerned.”

Way to swing wild there, Tina. Navratilova is one of the most respected athletes in her field and has long been an ambassador to tennis, which is why it’s surprising that she’d take such a hard-line stance on a colleague who very likely has done more good for tennis than she has. Comparing Agassi to Clemens is wrong. Not only has Agassi owned up to his misdeeds, but he did it while being under no pressure to do so. No one made these claims against Agassi. No one sat him in front of a grand jury. No one put him under a microscope.

Navratilova went on to imply that “owning up” to his lies in an autobiography somehow doesn’t count.

“He owned up to it [in the book],” Navratilova said. “but it doesn’t help now.”

Would getting suspended for meth by a tribunal in 1998 have helped? Who would it have helped? How?

Do I condone drug use? Or lying? Or profiting from those lies? Or cheating? No. Not in a vacuum. We’re not in one though. But like it or not, we live in a world full of gray and sometimes yes or no answers just aren’t accurate.

By positioning Roger Clemens alongside Agassi, Navratilova (and the countless others who likely feel the same way she does) marked Agassi a cheater who used drugs to enhance his performance. But c’mon. Stop it. Hyperactivity may be a reaction from meth use, but so is shortness of breath, loss of coordination, dizziness, decreased appetite and numbness. Agassi started 1997 (the year he said he used methamphetamines) ranked No. 8 in the world. Throughout the season he dropped to as low as No. 141.

Worst enhanced performance ever.

So maybe it isn’t the performance enhancement, so much as the lying in 1998 at which the public should aim their negative opinions. Lying isn’t good. In the end, Agassi shouldn’t have done it. He should have taken his lumps. Hell, he might even be more beloved today had he gone through with his suspension publicly. Then again, the public wasn’t as jaded against public scandal 11 years ago as it is now. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone so well. And Navratilova seems not to have taken that last bit into consideration, or not care about the possibility that Agassi’s career seriously risked being finished.

So the ATP tribunal owed Agassi a suspension. But what would they have been suspending him for, really? Cheating? He didn’t cheat. He used a banned substance that hurt him and his performance. For compromising the image of the ATP? He didn’t. He blamed his struggles on a sore wrist and some of the closest people to him were unaware of his drug use.

“Maybe it was me being naïve, but I had no clue,” Brad Gilbert, Agassi’s longtime coach, said in a telephone interview with the New York Times on Friday.

Would the suspension have been for Agassi’s fans who (unknowingly) watched him suffer through a horrific 1997? Well, if we’re looking out for the fans, it should be noted that he would have been suspended in 1998 for his positive test in ’97. By 1998, according to Agassi, he’d quit doing meth and mounted an astounding climb from No. 122 in January to No. 6 in December. The fans? They wouldn’t have seen that.

Agassi was the only victim of his meth use in 1997. Why punish him twice?

Back to an earlier point: There’s plenty of precedent that tennis didn’t owe Agassi a suspension in the first place. Eight cases of positive steroid tests were exonerated in 2003 after a similar-but-stricter tribunal than the one Agassi faced found that none of the players intended to enhance their performance with the substance. Earlier this year the Austrian Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) dismissed the WTA’s Tamira Paszek for illegally re-injecting blood that had been transfused, purified and then put back into her body. She wasn’t aware of its illegality and therefore, NADA exonerated her on the grounds that she didn’t intend to cheat.

No one’s accusing Agassi of using meth with the intention of enhancing his athletic ability.

Then there’s the profit aspect.

It’s possible and, in fact, likely that Agassi lied in 1998 so as not to lose his endorsements. It’s also possible and likely that we’re talking about Agassi’s addiction now because he’s got a book to sell next week. But he didn’t dabble in crank so that he could add to his bank account a decade later.

And if you think he did, then the irrational cynicism from which you suffer is non-refundable. Ain’t no comin’ back now.

Yeah. All this chatter will help push product. Should we hope our favorite celebrities write books filled with old anecdotes that we’ve all heard? If everything in his book is true, I don’t fault him for telling his story.

But that’s coming from someone who believes this to be the first time Agassi came out ahead from any of his past transgressions.

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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

Serena Williams started the 2009 WTA season as the clear world No. 1. A screwy scoring system and almost five months later and Dinara Safina usurped Williams at the top of the leaderboard. Another six months would pass with Safina as one of the weakest No. 1-ranked players in women’s tennis history and Serena Williams complaining that it was so. Order would seemingly be restored on October 12 when Serena regained the top rank, but by October 26, she would lose it to Safina again.

There is one tournament left to decide who will end the 2009 season on top.

I’d like to tell you that this will go down as a battle for the ages. I’d like to tell you that these two women respect each other and that respect drives them to the brink. I’d like to tell you that everything about their careers comes down to this season and everything about this season comes down to the final tournament in Qatar. I’d like to tell you where Qatar is on a map.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you any of these things.

This will be the WTA’s lede story heading into the final tournament. Because on paper, it’s dramatic. Because Serena Williams is so far ahead of her competition, any sniff of tribulation the association can throw in front of her to keep their best player compelling, they’ll do. Because it would be nice if the current ranking system wasn’t as bunk as it is and if Safina can pull one out – just one, even if it’s not a major – it will help keep that veneer alive.

But it’s not happening, or at least it shouldn’t happen. But instead of blaming the WTA’s scoring system, why not blame Williams and Safina? After all, if either of these women wanted the glory of the No. 1 rank, this match (and a few others) could be as epic as it will be hyped.

But Safina doesn’t want it because she’s not a killer. She’s efficient, but ultimately can’t handle the eyes on her. She’s a piano player that knows the notes backward and forward, but plays without enthusiasm. You hear it. You see it. You feel it. She wants to reach the No. 1 spot, but she doesn’t want to be the No. 1-ranked player in the world.

And Williams? She wants that top rank, but she wants Grand Slam titles more. And she wants her book to sell well and her clothing line to grow and her brand to enhance. That top rank is important, but not important enough for her to make it out of the second round in three separate small tournaments from April 6 to May 17. It wasn’t important enough for her to play in more than 14 tournaments like Caroline Wozniacki who played in 24 and climbed from No. 12 in the world to No. 4 in 12 months. Williams is a decade older than Wozniacki and has won more Grand Slams this summer than Wozniacki has in her career, but Williams greatness stunts many people from articulating that she expects things to be given to her. The WTA’s scoring system may be flawed, but Williams knew that going into the season. It was flawed in January ust as it is flawed now. If she wants that No. 1 rank, she could have had it. She wants it, but not bad enough.

From left: Caroline Wozniacki, Serena Williams and Dinara Safina at the October 25 draw for the WTA Championships in Doha, Qatar

These are the gladiators set to do battle one last time in 2009. One who can’t handle it and one who doesn’t want to work for it.

Sweet.

When the season ends the only compelling stories with Safina and Williams will be if Williams bothered stepping up when the stakes were less than “grand” and if Safina stepped up when … there were stakes. You’ll notice in both cases, the story is internal. Internal tennis is very often uninteresting tennis.

Wozniacki’s only 287 points out of third. I’m pulling for her to buzz saw through everyone and give both the No. 1 and 2 spot a reason to get motivated. If that’s possible anytime before the Aussie Open.

UPDATE: See? This is what I’m sayin’.

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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! via Getty Images

Well, neither Williams sister made it to the U.S. Open finals and so now seems as good as any time to bring up the fact that the Williams – especially Serena – lollygag their way through small WTA events and earn their keep during the big four Slams. Except that this time around, they didn’t really earn their keep, did they? What follows are two sides of the argument weighing the worth of the season’s other tournaments and the duty that the sisters may or may not have to them.

As of Monday, 2,000 points are up for grabs at this year’s U.S. Open.

For the uninitiated, 2,000 points are what the winner of the Flushing Meadows tournament gets added to their overall points that determine each player’s rank. The player with the most points will be ranked No. 1. The player with the second-most points, No. 2 and so-on. Really, it works the same way a professional sports team accumulates wins and losses (and ties if you’re one of the lame sports) over the course of a season.

But imagine if football awarded 1,000 points for every win, 550 points for every loss and 100 points for each tie? At some point, people would become curious why the numbers were set so ridiculously high. This is a big problem with tennis. Tennis developed a system that awards anywhere between 10 to 2,000 points for each tournament (in over 40 tournaments a year), yet has not provided the casual tennis fan any reason to know or care about these points.

So now imagine that your favorite football team not only earned 1,000 points for a win, but the NFL failed to make you care about it one way or the other. Every once in a while, you’d just be alerted that your team was ranked third in its division. It would occasionally mingle in the vague notion that in a few weeks, depending on how things shake out, your team could be ranked higher (maybe) … and now you see why tennis’ methods for churning up excitement without context has really harmed the sport.

Video games like Donkey Kong, Space Invaders and Q*Bert made it so each tiny success from a player yielded oddly high amounts of points. Why? Well, because 3 million points sounds way more awesome than a dozen…

In sports however, stupidly high numbers are a bad thing. Yes, fans want high scoring games. A 3-0 football game, 2-1 baseball game, 1-0 soccer game and 75-65 basketball game are all considered boring, but creating a system in which each of those scores are in the thousands will not bring in more fans. Casual fans are scared by large numbers. Baseball has steadily been declining in popularity since the 1960s, while, say, football has grown immensely. One of the reasons for this? There aren’t 162 football games per season. A fan only has to pay attention for three hours once a week to see their favorite team perform. If a baseball fan puts in three hours a week to his team, it means he missed five other games.

For many people, investing in every game of a season is too much to ask in baseball and just perfect in football. The number of tennis tournaments aren’t really the problem here, but the collective meaning of those tournaments over an entire season is.

Below is a basic graph of how ranking points are awarded in tennis:

Click pic to embiggen

Fans need to know what they’re rooting for and what certain accomplishments mean for the players. Most Cardinals fans know how far in first place the team is. Most Knicks fans know how many games out of the playoff picture they are. But if you’re rooting for Rafael Nadal to do well in the Open this year, a shockingly small number of fans will know a) what his current point total is (9,025) b) the number of points he earned at this tournament last year (450) c) how far behind No. 2 Andy Murray he is (585 points) d) How far Murray got in the U.S. Open last year (he earned 750 points) and e) what needs to happen in order for Rafa to slide into the No. 2 ranking again.

It’s all about context. Fans want and need at least a little of it to maintain an interest in the sport.

Have you ever watched a game you’re unfamiliar with (let’s say cricket, for example)? Are the two teams you’re watching any good? Does the fact that one team is beating the other by 90 runs mean it’s a blowout, or is that normal?

Murray has a 585 point lead on Nadal. This means that if Murray makes it to the final four, Nadal can’t surpass him no matter what.

There. The U.S. Open just get a little more exciting.

Tennis has done an awful job in the last six or eight years transitioning from enticing the old tennis fans to enticing the new ones and it shows in the sport’s dwindling fan interest and even more dwindling depth of competition. If children aren’t watching and investing in tennis now, they won’t grow up to play the game professionally in a decade. (Oh, who am I kidding? If they’re old enough to watch TV, they’re old enough to turn pro, like, next year.)

The scoring system can stay the same (if it must, though it’s not recommended), but it needs simplification.

If I want to run up big numbers, I’ll go jump some barrels in Donkey Kong. And unless tennis figures out how to make the game more fan-friendly all season long, it won’t be long before I decide to jump those barrels instead of watching tennis.

The WTA’s top two pupils were skirt-deep in the ongoing dilemma of the sport’s ranking system last week. The 52-week cumulative scoring system has ranked Russia’s Dinara Safina as the top female of the tour going for 17 weeks. Safina usurped No. 2-ranked Serena Williams, despite never having won a Grand Slam title at any point in her career. Wiliams has won two just this year (Wimbledon and the Australian, where she beat Safina in the finals) and 11 singles titles since 1999.

Last week, Williams repeated her familiar cry that she is “the people’s champ” and that no one who is winless in Grand Slam tournaments should be considered the best in the world. It’s no secret that Williams was sore about losing her No. 1 rank back in April, but others including Williams’ sister Venus and former World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic are joining into the chorus.

“To be number one,” said Jankovic, “you should be complete and if you are number one you have to be beating the Williams sisters.”

If Serena is right about Safina not deserving her top rank, why does she have it?

It’s that pesky rankings system and the fact that Safina is one of the few women whose play has helped uncover the weaknesses of it. The WTA’s system assigns points to each tournament and each round of that tournament. For example: the winner of Wimbledon will walk away with 1,000 points, loser earns 700 and decreases each round down to two points simply for being one of the 128 players to show up.

The four Grand Slams offer the most points because they offer the most difficult competition. Safina does well in these tournaments, but as we said, she doesn’t win. What she does win are all the other tournaments that aren’t as publicized or as competitive. She’s the biggest fish in the smaller ponds.

The top-ranked Russian has reached the finals in seven of the 12 tournaments she’s entered in 2009. She’s won three of them, but all of the tourney’s she’s won were smaller events that yielded half the points of the Grand Slams. The trick is, she’s entering more competitions than Serena Williams (she’s only entered 10 this year) and has taken more advantage of those smaller competitions (Serena has often been accused of losing focus in smaller tournaments). Earning only 500 points at Wimbledon can be supplemented by winning a tiny tournament during a week that Williams had taken off or spent playing in non-WTA Tour competitions. Last week when Williams played in the World Team Tennis, which does not count toward WTA points, Safina earned an additional 75 by making it into the third round of the L.A. Championships.

And that’s the problem, the WTA rankings don’t weigh the tournaments properly. Why not double the points players receive for advancing through Grand Slams and getting rid of the limit to how many smaller tournaments the Tour will count toward the point system? The Tour only counts the best 17 tournaments for each player in one season. There are 55 WTA Tours per year. Obviously some of them are played at the same time, but a healthy player could either play in 40-44 tourneys a season, or with the purchase of a truly kickass jetpack, go for all 55.

It’s a shame that some of the attacks have felt in nature, if not in fact, to be attacks on Safina and not on the WTA scoring, a detail that had been lost on some, but not on Safina.

“I didn’t do the ranking system,” said Safina. “If [Serena] has questions, she can give these questions to the WTA who is doing the ranking system. It’s the result of how you play the whole year, not just the four grand slams.”

The rankings do little other than provide a point of reference for fans, tournament seeders and Serena Williams’ ego. That being said, if you’re going to do something, do it accurately. Serena’s the best, now let’s hope the WTA finds a way to get her to stop talking about it.

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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

Halfway through this year’s Wimbledon tournament, stories popped up after a spokesman from the All England Club said that the people who schedule the matches to the courts tend to give the prime spots to the more attractive female athletes. Not surprisingly, the media and the blogosphere (unless bloggers are counted as members of the media, which my lack of a press pass suggests they are not) cried foul and sexism and sexism fouls and foul sexism.

The weirdest thing about the sudden hubbub over hot tennis players is that really, the Wimbledon play committee is far less guilty of it than even they’ve suggested.

Quick! Name five current female tennis players. I’ll give you a second to think of it. Either you can rattle off 25 of them, in which case, congratulations, you’re a tennis fan or you’re like most Americans and can only come up with four: 1) Venus and 2) Serena Williams, 3) Maria Sharapova and 4) Anna … Kour … Korny … Kournicopia … Korcoran … well, whateverhernameis. Hot chick.

Admit it. I’m right aren’t I? Don’t shake your head. I can read your thoughts. That’s how I knew you meant Anna Kournikova (who hasn’t played a professional tennis match since 2003, by the way).

I’m not a shill for Wimbledon, nor am I claiming that various forms of sexism do not permeate the sport. They do, they exist at Wimbledon, but not in such an open-and-shut manner as has been tossed around the Internet lately. The gist is that someone like Maria Kirilenko is hotter than someone like No. 1-ranked Dinara Safina and therefore – Safina’s rank be damned – Kirilenko gets Centre Court.

Eight days have passed in Wimbledon with nine women’s matches on Centre Court in that time. It is important to note that in that same span, 15 men’s matches have been played at Centre Court. More on that in a bit.

The conspiracy theorists jumping all over this story lean on the philosophy that the best competitors (the top-ranked females, presumably) should yield the brightest spotlight. Of the nine ladies matches on Centre Court in the first eight days of competition, six of them showcased a top-ranked women. So let us be clear: We’re only talking about three matches that can possibly offend anyone…

Look at the list of Centre Court ladies matches:

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via AP

DAY 1: (2) Serena Williams def. Neuza Silva
DAY 2: (3) Venus Williams def. Stefanie Voegel
DAY 3: Gisela Dulko def. (24) Maria Sharapova
DAY 4: (9) Caroline Wozniacki def. Maria Kirilenko
DAY 5: (8) Victoria Azarenko def. (28) Sorana Cristea
DAY 6: (3) Venus Williams def. C.S. Navarro
DAY 7: (1) Dinara Safina def. (17) A. Mauresmo
DAY 8: (1) Dinara Safina def. Sabine Lisicki
(2) Serena Williams def. (8) Victoria Azarenka

Besides a shocking amount of vowels, what do you see in this list? Days 3-5 (listed in red) are clearly the matches that compelled the Daily News article to say, “While a succession of easy-on-the-eye unknowns have appeared in Wimbledon’s prime arena, the top women’s seeds have been relegated to lesser courts.”

Here’s what I’m willing to concede about those three days: Higher ranked players were playing somewhere other than Centre Court. I’ll also concede that while the top-ranked were elsewhere, attractive tennis players were at Centre Court. Six of ‘em.

Here’s what I’m unwilling to concede:  That they are unknowns.

First off, don’t call Maria Sharapova an unknown. She’s known. She’s very known. She’s more known than you and me combined. Stop it. On Day 4, when Venus Williams was on Court 1 and Safina took Court 2, up-and-comer Caroline Wozniacki defeated Maria Kirilenko at Centre Court. Wozniacki had just made a splash at the French Open a few weeks before and, oh yeah … she’s the ninth-ranked woman in the world. Let’s say that despite being one of the 10 best female tennis players in the world, Wozniacki is still unknown, isn’t that all the more reason to get her onto a prominent platform to promote the sport? You’ll be hard-pressed to find people knowledgeable about tennis who aren’t bored with the Williams sisters’ absolute domination for the past decade. It makes more sense to showcase players outside the top three early in the tournament because the likelihood that they’ll be around later dwindles with each round. The next day Victoria Azarenka (ranked one spot above Wozniacki) defeated No. 28 Sorana Cristea. Safina and Venus Williams had the day off, which only left Serena. Where was Serena? On Court 2 battling it out with unseeded Roberta Vinci.

Sophisticated tennis fans would more likely prefer to watch two ranked players, right? Isn’t there a better chance for close competition between any two seeds than a  No. 2 and a non-seed? Unsophisticated fans probably just want to watch hot chicks grunt. Either way, Wimbledon made the right call.

From The Daily Mail:

The fact that many seats remained empty for the Cristea-Azarenka clash implies that the knowledgeable SW19 crowd were underwhelmed by the tennis on offer. Which would suggest that attractive players are placed on Centre to amuse the BBC television audience, some of whom care more for a pretty face than a powerful forehand.

This brings me to my next non-concession: That the SW19 crowd is so sophisticated that they only follow “good tennis.” UPDATE: They don’t. From a Day 10 recap: “The [No.1 Dinara Safina v. No. 3 Venus Williams match opened before a half-full Centre Court as the crowd sought shade and refreshment after Serena’s almost three-hour victory over Russia’s Elena Dementieva in the day’s first semi-final."

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

Look at the picture on the left. This was taken at the conclusion of Wednesday’s Day 3 match between No. 24 Maria Sharapova and unseeded Gisela Dulko. Not too many empty seats, right? Surely all those sophisticated strawberries ‘n’ cream-eaters showed up for more than the grunting. No. They’re there for the same reason people watch Venus and Serena: because the Sharapova Supernova is known and marketed like any other marquee athlete. There’s nothing wrong with this, but there’s a difference between marketing and sexism. C’mon people, this is sports here. Stop acting like this circus hasn’t rolled into town countless times before. Most fans – even rabid basketball fans – don’t go to a Lakers game to see solid execution of Phil Jackson‘s triangle offense. They go to see Kobe Bryant drop some awesomeness on the other team.

The final concession that I’m unwilling to make is that the female players whom are most deserving of the Centre Court spot are being denied the honor. It’s not true. At least not insofar as some other female players are getting more of a shot.

Both Roger Federer and Andy Murray (ranked No. 2 and 3 in the world respectively) were easily the favorites coming into this year’s Wimbledon. In the first eight days, they’ve each played on Centre Court four times. The top three females have each made it to Centre Court twice in that same span.

On the surface, this just proves that the cream of the female crop isn’t getting the same play that the cream of the male crop is. This is true, but not because prettier ladies are taking up valuable spots. It’s because of the men. There’s a bigger problem than favoring beauty at Wimbledon, it’s favoring men. They spend twice as much time on Centre Court as the ladies. Why? Well because the ATP has heftier competition (and bigger draws because of it).

It would be naive to pretend physical beauty plays no part in player popularity and exposure. It does. But one player’s beauty would not get her on Centre Court alone; that part of this entire storyline has been blown way out of proportion. The Daily News, BBC and dozens of blogs this week started blaming the leaves, when the roots are the problem. Until the WTA, Wimbledon and other tennis tournaments begin making as many of its players as exciting and varied as the men, they’ll be stuck in the same rut they are in now: no one knows half of the top 10 seeds and Anna Kournikova remains one of the few female players anyone can name.

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