It’s not about the aces, but the dresses at Roland Garros.
Wednesday was Children’s Day at Roland Garros, a day when schoolchildren are given priority for tickets. Naturally, many in the crowd were school-age. They may have had a quick growing-up when Venus Williams stepped on court to battle Spain’s Arantxa Parra Santonja.
When Williams took off her warm-up clothing, her opponent, indeed the match itself, became secondary issues. The primary was the American’s black lace corset, which looked more like her negligee and would not have been out of place in the Moulin Rouge cabaret down the road. It was held to her shoulders by red straps, which were not doing their job very convincingly. Williams kept hoicking up her dress between points, raising visions of a possible wardrobe malfunction. Underneath, Williams wore tight skin-coloured knickers.
Williams often uses daring court appearances to promote her own line of fashion. She wore some flesh-coloured knickers under a dress at January's Australian Open, which provoked midnight calls from her publicist. Often more keen to talk fashion than tennis, she expressed pride in her creation after the match, to go with part of God’s creation. “The design has nothing to do with the rear. It just so happens that I have a very well-developed one,” she said.
Next breath, she attempted to raise the debate to the level of the esoteric. “It’s really about the illusion. Like, you can wear lace, but what’s the point of wearing lace when there's just black under. The illusion of just having bare skin is definitely for me a lot more beautiful. So it’s really not about anything else other than just that skin showing.”
As could be expected, many in Paris were scandalised. The outfit, they said, was close to being indecent. USA Today conducted an online survey in which more than 40 per cent of those who voted suggested that Williams should be asked to “cover up”.
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That may not be a very wise thing to do. At least Williams provided something to talk about. So far, there has been little else to talk about in the women’s game at the French Open. Dinara Safina, last year’s finalist and world number one till recently, lost in the first round to Kimiko Date Krumm. Upsets happen all the time, but this was the mother of them all, or at least the big sister. Date is 39 (yes, you read it right!), began her career in 1989, and retired in 1996, only to return in 2008 after a 12-year absence. She was battling a calf injury while playing Safina. It was no surprise when she ran out of gas and lost the next round to Australia’s Jarmila Groth (heard of her?). Defending champion Svetlana Kuznetsova avoided joining Safina on the sidelines purely because Bosnia’s Andrea Petkovic lost her nerve and lost four match points in the second round. Kuznetsova promptly lost in the next round, though.
Does this show the depth of women’s tennis or a vacuum? You figure that out.