{"id":4260,"date":"2010-08-30T15:28:37","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T19:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=4260"},"modified":"2018-12-03T11:10:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T16:10:36","slug":"rooting-for-muscles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/30\/rooting-for-muscles\/","title":{"rendered":"Rooting For Muscles"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mceTemp\"><\/div>\n<p>It\u2019s a weird moment for women\u2019s tennis. Not bad, but weird. Watch the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2010\/08\/29\/magazine\/womens-tennis.html?ref=magazine\">bizarre slow-motion video<\/a> montage of \u201cwomen who hit very hard\u201d on the <em>Times<\/em> website. Then watch it again. Underneath the glitter, these Amazons are straight out of Herodotus. But with the exception of the Serena Williams and perhaps the leonine Kim Cljisters, the glittering women here (Dementieva, Jankovic, Stosur, Azarenka, and Zvonareva) are mostly unknown to Americans. Serena\u2019s withdrawal from the 2010 U.S. Open\u2014she needed surgery after cutting her foot\u2014and the absence of Justine Henin, the Belgian known as \u201cthe sister of no mercy,\u201d has left the field wide open.<\/p>\n<p>They say that the U.S. Open, with its fast and reliable surface, is the place where the best usually win. But in this year\u2019s hobbled women\u2019s draw, all bets are off\u2014and, though Venus Williams, even with a bum knee, and the resurgent Russian Maria Sharapova, are always contenders, it will most likely be a woman whose name most Americans can\u2019t pronounce, let alone remember. The men have Rafa and Federer; the women . . . Wozniacki and Clijsters?<\/p>\n<p>The Women\u2019s Tennis Association is no doubt praying for the requisite underdog to emerge, preferably an American under six feet tall. Melanie Oudin, last year\u2019s darling, is apparently the most sought-after woman in the tournament, despite the fact that she\u2019s ranked 43rd in the world. Oudin, the sunny, blond, all-American raced to the quarters of the 2009 Open wearing rose and honey-yellow Adidas sneakers inscribed with the word \u201cBELIEVE.\u201d But nobody believes she can do it again; the eighteen-year-old has a 17-20 record this year and came into the tournament on a four-match losing streak. So why is she so popular? Her success last year only accounts for part of it. Unlike the women in the <em>Times<\/em> video, who look more like LeBron James than Chris Evert, she\u2019s diminutive, scrappy, and has a reassuringly all-around game. This morning, in the showcase Arthur Ashe Stadium, she filleted the court, demolishing the qualifier Olga Savchuk with the kind of tennis that defeated four Russians in a row at the Open last year. (For those who don\u2019t have the Tennis Channel, you can watch many of the matches live on usopen.org.) It\u2019s easy to see Oudin\u2019s appeal\u2014and her potential, if she can develop a big weapon that will counter some of her disadvantage in size\u2014but it\u2019s also hard not to wonder if some of it doesn\u2019t come from a reaction against the rippling quads and veiny biceps of some of the more powerful girls, and against their consonant-laden names. The contrast between Oudin and Serena, the reigning queen of American tennis, can\u2019t be missed either. When Serena lost in the semis at the Open last year after a profanity-filled rant against an official who called her for a foot-fault cost her match point, tournament director Jim Curley called her behavior \u201cthreatening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I, for one, am <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/29\/magazine\/29Tennis-t.html?_r=1\">rooting for muscles<\/a>. We\u2019ve always wanted our beskirted players to be pretty; why not gorgeous? And is there anything more astonishing than the wave moving through Samantha Stosur\u2019s quadriceps, echoed by those flowing pink pleats? She has the flanks of a thoroughbred, and the beauty.<\/p>\n<p>Off to the races.<\/p>\n<p><em>Louisa Thomas is a contributing editor at <\/em>Newsweek<em>. Her book, <\/em>Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family\u2014A Test of Will and Faith in World War I<em>, will come out in 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a weird moment for women\u2019s tennis. Not bad, but weird. Watch the bizarre slow-motion video montage of \u201cwomen who hit very hard\u201d on the Times website. Then watch it again. Underneath the glitter, these Amazons are straight out of Herodotus. But with the exception of the Serena Williams and perhaps the leonine Kim Cljisters, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[931],"tags":[734,733,731,730,729,732],"class_list":["post-4260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-sports","tag-kim-cljisters","tag-melanie-oudin","tag-muscles","tag-serena-williams","tag-u-s-open","tag-womens-tennis"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Rooting For Muscles by Louisa Thomas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"August 30, 2010 \u2013 It\u2019s a weird moment for women\u2019s tennis. Not bad, but weird. 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