Come on tennis, help yourself

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So Maria Sharapova won an intriguing tennis match Friday night at the LA Women’s Tennis Championship, one where she double faulted 11 times in the second set and still won. The match ended at about 10:10 or so and Maria didn’t come to talk to the media until 11:10 or so. That’s well past the deadlines of many print newspapers.

You don’t care about our problems and you shouldn’t, but tennis should. Sharapova is sharp, interesting, a compelling player with an ongoing and compelling story as she recovers from shoulder surgery and tries to compete with a reworked serve. That she was able to overcome the second-set crumbling of that serve makes for great drama. And you, the tennis fans, would probably like to hear why an athlete has such a problem, how she overcomes it, what comes next.

Sharapova is rehabbing and needs to ice, needs to take care of her body of course. But athletes in so many other sports manage to ice, warm down, shower, and still talk to the media and not take an hour to do it. It’s been said a lot about tennis, but protecting the athletes above all else by making them less accessible will only make them a little more forgotten, a little easier to ignore.

Oh, and it’s 11:36 p.m. and the tournament’s No. 2 seed, Vera Zvonareva, and the 2008 runnerup Flavia Pennetta are still playing. Second set. Is anybody watching? Will anybody care who wins? Will it matter if they talk? Probably not.

-- Diane Pucin