It’s predictable that Safina will garner more attention and be the heavy favorite going into the final. After all, she’s the top player in the world chasing her first Grand Slam title, while Kuznetsova has taken on the air of an also-ran over the last few years, a supremely talented player who fails to come through in the big moments.
It’s not an entirely undeserved reputation, and yet I can’t help but feel that at least part (a big part) of the media’s utter lack of interest in Kuznetsova’s tennis comes down to the fact that she is not hot. This situation was at its most crystal clear back in that tennis-mad summer and fall of 2004, when Svetlana Kuznetsova burst into the big-time by winning the U.S. Open, just a few short months after another Russian teenager had emerged as a champion at Wimbledon.
There seems to be a myth in retrospect that Maria Sharapova was an unseeded wunderkind when she won Wimbledon as a seventeen-year-old in 2004. It’s not true – she was the 13th seeded player in the tournament and on every insider’s radar as a potential phenom just waiting to explode. She’d just made the quarters at the 2004 French. In short, other than the “being 17 years old” business, this was no Boris Becker kind of breakthrough.
But it felt like it, and rightfully so, because Sharapova’s waltz through the 2004 Wimbledon draw was exhilarating to watch, and the way she bullied around the reigning tour bully, Serena Williams, in the final was simply unfathomable, Buster Douglas beating up on Mike Tyson territory. Here was a Russian teen arriving fully former before our eyes on Centre Court at Wimbledon and giving the implacable Serena the asswhupping of her life. Deservedly so, it became one of the biggest sports stories of the year and turned Sharapova into an instant superstar.
Cut to two months later, and Svetlana Kuznetsova, aged nineteen and ranked ninth in the tournament, pulls pretty much the same act at the U.S. Open., blows her way through the draw losing only a single set playing an astonishing brand of go-for-broke power tennis.
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And yet, media-wise, you would have thought that… well, you would have thought that no one won the women’s singles title at the Open that year, that the entire tournament was cancelled due to lack of interest. Sharapova went out in the fourth round, as I recall, and neither Venus nor Serena made it past the quarters. Two Americans advanced to the semis, Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati, and they both lost to Russians, Davenport in a great match to Kuznetsova, and Capriati to eventual runner-up, Elena Dementieva.
Part of the problem was that no big-name players made the final, and part of the problem was that it was the U.S. Open. Americans are notoriously star-obsessed and interested in American players first and foremost. Had Kuznetsova’s emergence occurred at Wimbledon, it likely would have created more of a buzz in the media, and had she beaten Venus Williams rather than Dementieva in the Open final, it would have been a much bigger deal Stateside.
But look, let’s get down to brass tacks. Maria Sharapova is supermodel hot, and Kuznetsova is a fine-looking but unspectacularly attractive woman. If Sharapova had NOT won Wimbledon, and then marched through the U.S. Open draw in exactly the same fashion as did Kuznetsova, it would have been front-page news for weeks in NYC, with Page Six mentions for Maria every day of the tournament. Not only that, but there is no question in my mind that if Kuznetsova were even close to being as beautiful and leggy as is Sharapova that the media take on her victory at the ’04 U.S. Open would have been completely different. “The Ovas” they would have called Maria and Sveta, the two Russian divas, the next great rivalry of tennis, etc.
As it was, Kuznetsova’ Grand Slam title was seen as a curious and boring anomaly while Sharapova was heralded as the future of women’s tennis. Since then, this disparity has perpetuated itself, and the disparity in their achievements warrants this at least somewhat. Sharapova has held the number one ranking in the world and won two more Grand Slams, while Kuznetsova has been only as high as number two in the world, and has not won another Slam, appearing in two Slam finals, the 2006 French and the 2007 U.S. Open, both of which she lost to Justine Henin.
But even allowing for the fact that Sharapova has had more success, I still can’t get away from the fact that the lion’s share of the difference in our interest in the two players is a question of their looks. There are people who will counter this by saying that Sharapova also has a great personality and that’s a big part of her appeal, to which I say… bull. She’s bubbly and available, but she’s not exactly Lauren Bacall on the charisma front. Kuznetsova is slightly shyer, but also forthcoming and possessed of a genuine sense of humor. I’ve seen her interviewed many times, and she handles herself very well. On that court, at least, she is Maria’s equal.
