She bringswrong kindof racketLauryn Edwards, a 9-year-old...
She brings
wrong kind
of racket
Lauryn Edwards, a 9-year-old Australian tennis player, has been notified by her junior club team that she can no longer compete in tournaments because her on-court grunting has become a distraction to opponents.
The Herald-Sun, a Melbourne newspaper, reported that Edwards, whose favorite player is notorious grunter Maria Sharapova, would be allowed to play if she could guarantee she wouldn’t grunt. Edwards said she doesn’t think she can stop.
“It feels natural to do my noise,” she told the Herald-Sun. “I’m not faking it. It makes me play better. When I don’t do it, I don’t play my best tennis.”
Edwards’ father, Duncan, said the no-grunt guarantee is a ridiculous request.
“What do they want me to do?” he said. “Put Band-Aids over her mouth?”
Trivia time
Sharapova in 2004 became the second-youngest winner of the Wimbledon women’s singles title in the Open era (after 1968). Who was the youngest?
Seeing double
Times columnist Bill Dwyre recently wrote about Oscar Robertson and the 1961-62 season in which the Cincinnati Royals guard averaged a triple double.
Reader Bennett Tramer of Santa Monica points out that Robertson averaged a triple-double for the first five years of his career: 30.3 points, 10.4 rebounds and 10.6 assists.
Still, the ‘61-’62 season was the only one in which he averaged in double figures in all three categories.
Back to base-ics
The Kansas City Royals are averaging more than 100 losses over the last four years, so first base coach Rusty Kuntz hopes brushing up on fundamentals might help.
Kuntz has developed a quiz that tests players on knowledge of the essentials of baserunning and defense.
A sample question: When sliding feet-first into a base, is your front foot straight up or sideways? (Straight up.) Another: If the ball hits an umpire on the infield grass, is it alive or dead? (Dead.)
Kuntz said there has been a wide range of success and failure.
“I’d say it was 50-50,” he said. “Some of them did relatively well. Some did OK. And some had no clue.”
The easiest question anyone missed?
“The distance between bases,” Kuntz said. “It’s 90 feet, of course. Some guys got that wrong.”
A tangled web
The cyber-ink was barely dry on the final post at DumpDorrell.com, a website dedicated to ousting former UCLA football Coach Karl Dorrell, before news arrived that FireRickNeuheisel.com was for sale.
The domain is currently owned by a man named Mike Burger, who has written on the site that it is for sale to anyone who:
Donates $75,000 to the Colorado general scholarship fund.
Donates $75,000 to the Washington Scholarships for Students program.
Donates $100,000 to Teach for America.
“It worries me that college football has gotten to where it is the focal point in one’s life,” Burger wrote on the site.
“I am not trying to profit from this at all. I am simply hoping that if you have the means to support the college football-industrial complex, you could steer that money towards more worthwhile causes.”
Trivia answer
Martina Hingis won the 1997 singles title at 16 years 278 days and is the youngest winner in any era.
And finally
Michael Rand of the Minneapolis Star Tribune uncovered what former major league pitcher Scott Erickson has been up to since retiring before the 2007 season: Erickson and wife Lisa Guerrero, the former sportscaster, have co-produced a movie called “A Plumm Summer.”
It stars Jeff Daniels, William Baldwin, Henry Winkler and Guerrero, in her first lead role on the big screen, and it’s a true story about a kidnapped puppet named Froggy Doo.
“Process that for a while,” Rand wrote.