“What are little girls made of? They’re made of sugar. And spice. And sweat. And grit. And fucking swearing, bitches.”
And therein lies the question. When do all those lovely catch words, sweat, grit, determination, desire, competitor, passion… when do they all become ugly?
Last night in Rome, it got ugly. Vika was, um, unimpressed with Maria, and had a catchy phrase to call her. And after she was forced to retire with an elbow injury, down in the second set, she flailed her arms around in a near universal, ahem “I find you highly irritable” gesture.
In a rather classy way, Vika said on Twitter (@Vika7) that she essentially only ever chirps herself on court and not another player. Maria declined to comment any further. Few. Vika was mad at herself, case closed. Except…
Who calls themselves a “f—ing b—h” after winning a set? And my first year university psychology class I took way back when tells me that when you’re pissed at yourself, you usually do something physical. Like, I don’t know, smash a racquet? Pull a Youzhny and bleed your forehead open? Not swing your arms helplessly. A nice attempt at a save, but not a realistic one.
So, as tennis fans, what do we do with this? This is nearly universal to tennis. When a pitcher throws at a hitter, they swear and look for payback. Hockey players will go after the other one, maybe fight. The list goes on. In tennis, not only can you not storm the mound, there is no one else on the field except the two of you. It’s all tension, baby.
For me, responding to this is difficult. I’ve never been a huge Vika fan, but I’ve never thought her as the scum of the earth, and really respect her game and think she’s great for the game. I also think I’m a highly competitive person and am definitely into finding ways of pumping myself up in intense, competitive situations.
However, no one wants a sore winner, and no one wants a sore loser either. Yet Vika falls into a strange spot here, being injured before the incident, and during the incident that led to her retirement. There is no “code of retirement ethics for an opponent” in other sports. In tennis, it’s unwritten. How many people have chirped on Justine for retiring in a slam final? Or for players retiring down a set and 0-4 or 0-5? “What the hell, just stand there and finish it out.”
In other words, I’m not going to sit here and tell that what Vika did was totally acceptable, or completely slimey. Simply, we should stop and think about what happened, and the players that have muttered similar words either undetected by cameras, or on non-show courts. I don’t know. Maybe it was unsportsmanlike, maybe it was in the heat of battle, or maybe it falls on the thin line between.
I’m willing to give her extreme leeway on this. I think of myself as basically a nice person, but I’m SUPER competitive. Something like this wouldn’t even have much to do with pumping myself up. I hate people when I’m competing against them. HATE them. Could be my mom, by best friend, or Mother Theresa, I would totally call someone a “fucking bitch” mid-match and not think anything of it.
I love this. Vika says this, gets caught on camera, and everyone beats her down and calls her classless, etc. Everyone needs to take a chill pill. I’m going to say this has been uttered more than a few times before on a tennis court between players for whatever reason-the stakes were high or the players don’t like each other, etc. She just happened to say it when the cameras were focused on her. It’s hilarious she’s been turned into the villain here, like her opponent is all niceness and lollipops.
And let me just say, I’ve called myself a fucking bitch a few times before. Once when I didn’t get as high of an A in an English class as I was expecting (really. Called myself a stupid fucking bitch). With that said, I completely think she was saying it towards Masha, but it’s still not as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. Players say things in the heat of the battle. End of.
Plus, isn’t this what everyone complains about, how the players now are too nice and friendly with each other? That we want the bitchiness of the late 90s, early 2000s back? Can’t have it both ways.
I think Vika was very unfortunate the way this all came out. The way I saw it, she just muttered something like ‘Take that, you f-ing bitch’ to herself after winning the first set and happened to be caught by a camera close-up. No doubt the ‘bitch’ in question was Maria, but it’s not like Vika shouted it to her or even said it out loud. You had to read her lips to catch it.
About the injury, she clearly hit the ground with her raquet at the end of a defensive squash-type forehand, which did damage to her elbow. I don’t see how you can blame her for retiring from the match, when she was obviously unable to hit a proper forehand and in pain whenever she tried to. No need to put herself through that for another 10 games in my opinion.
The gestures she made in the end might very well have been in frustration about the whole situation, and I don’t think they were directed specifically at Maria.