Thursday, January 24, 2008

SHARAPOV - TENNIS DAD


Yuri shadows his daughter's every move and, alarmingly, here he is clad in a camouflage hoodie.

And sunglasses.

Even indoors.

Shrieky reckons he looks like "an assassin" and encouraged him to keep the hood down even if he insists on wearing the top. .

Sharapov, though, has outdone himself here. After No. 1 daughter had demolished Justine Henin, he jumped up to applaud the victory and ran his finger across his throat, a gesture suggesting he was cutting his throat.

This is not a warm and fuzzy sign at the best of times, but in Australia it is regarded as particularly offensive.

The WTA and Yuri together are pleading that it was an innocent joke between Maria and Yuri about the sweatshirt.

The Aussies weren't buying that one.

Yuri, you see, has something of a record in this department and has been known to shout out, in Russian, less than flattering things to Shrieky’s opponents.

After one spectacularly vocal outburst, daughter was to be found outside the locker room giving father a verbal lashing along the lines of "If you ever embarrass me like that again, you will never travel to another tournament with me again…"

But for all the claims of misunderstandings and misinterpretations over the throat-cutting gesture, Yuri was sitting quietly at the courtside wearing a plain white tee-shirt and keeping his mouth shut sitting on his hoodie.

We should cut Yuri some slack.

Maybe, he's not malicious.

Just stupid!




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