You don't do that

If you've never read Cathal Kelly in the Sports section of 'The Globe and Mail', do yourself a favour and start.  I stumbled across him a few years ago, when reading something by my old Maclean Hunter colleague, Roy MacGregor.  Kelly is a brilliant writer -- a cross between a modern day James Joyce and the late Tom Wolfe.

I now look eagerly for him every day, even though I have zilch interest in professional sport.  He's funny, intelligent, insightful and makes me realize I am not that good a writer.  Really.  Anyway, yesterday he had a brilliant piece about the visceral hatred between Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.  Even though Williams consistently beats Sharapova, there is something about the latter that spooks the former.  I had no idea, but what do I read today?  Williams has pulled out of The French Open just before her fourth-round match with the confident and daunting (to her) Russian. 

Frankly, I think Williams was rattled by the impending battle and called a press conference to cite some vague pectoral muscle strain as the reason -- even before the "injury" had been looked at, diagnosed or MRI'd.  So, Sharapova won that one without having to step onto the court. 

In the "old days", no one would ever duck out of a match for a pulled muscle.  You entered the match and you played until you were beaten.  She had just won a decisive victory over someone-or-other and then announced she had to withdraw because of a hangnail.  It's complete BS.

As someone wrote the other day, tennis is now very boring.  Gone are the days of the volatile Ili Nastase, the tempestuous Jimmy Connors and the unpredictable John McEnroe.  Now everyone is a boring, wooden-faced Bjorn Borg or Milos Raonic.  We have a wonderful book by a couple of Aussie players entitled "Tennis for the Bloody Fun of It'.  No one's having any anymore.