Will Anyone Defend Margaret Court?

This is stuff for when nothing else is happening – just stirs up the worst feelings everywhere. I haven’t changed my mind since the last time it all came up. I don’t agree with her at all, I’m sure many people don’t and I’m just really sorry the media in Australia keep the argument going – haven’t they got anything else to write about than who a tennis arena is named after ?

Two things – however objectionable some of her attitudes are, she has a right to express them. She’s not inciting to violence, she has no power, politically or otherwise. Also, she never expressed those views when she was a player, and it is as a player she is celebrated.

The press seems to delight in provoking an old lady into saying outrageous things and then getting self-righteous about themselves, and that goes for a few other people as well. I find that a bit despicable.

Muguruza put it best: ‘I don’t give a damn what she thinks.’

Just leave it.

What did she say or do? I don’t follow Court much because she’s a homophobe. When you make comments about certain players not being rightful to play on the WTA tour because of their sexual proclivity, then you are being offensive and wrong-minded and I don’t care how many slams you won or how old you are.

“Tennis balls and trophies don’t care what you think”

Wimbledon usually gets it right. Its host country may have a dysfunctional tennis association with little interest in growing the sport, but the event itself gets so much right.

Her religious views are none of my business. There are plenty of religions out there and none of us have the time and energy to understand all of them.

I thought Margaret Court definitely went too far when she publicly criticized Casey Dellacqua for having a child when she was in a lesbian relationship. That was hurtful to Casey and, as you said, people have a right to a private life.

I can understand as well why Maggie is upset if the Australian Open didn’t allow her to give a speech to air her views om her big day. Certainly she would feel she is owed that.

I think as a prominent Australian she should have publicly campaigned for bushfire relief like Kyrgios did. The two of them should have worked on a campaign together and bridged the generations of Aussie tennis from the past to the future.

All credit to Kyrgios for taking charge of the Fire problem and raising awareness. Lets not be naive and not acknowledge that his handlers went big with his involvement. You cant deny he needed a better image going forward

That said, I’m sure there were tons of people that donated, and didn’t announce it

It’s like the celebrity that goes to visit a sick kid quietly, or the celeb that brings a film crew, both doing a good thing, just going about it differently

Scoop, I am watching and Foe is getting his butt kicked. He looks awful out there, bad movement, sloppy. What is going on?

Did anyone like my idea of a collaboration between Court and Kyrgios for Australia?

Tiafoe wins set two in style – Nakashima was serving awful, and kept hitting to the Tiafoe wheelhouse – the backhand side. Generally that works when it’s the weaker side for a player, but Tiafoe’s weaker side by far is the forehand. Tiafoe upped his serving and mixed up the pace, and even in a tiebreak set looked like the far better player.

Nakashima is looking young and playing inexperienced ball – serving badly, winning under 40% of second serves and serving mostly second serves because he hasn’t been able to buy a first serve this set. He also looks tired, so Tiafoe’s drop shots must be getting to him.

Tiafoe should grind Nakashima into the ground now. Not sure what’s left in the tank for Nakashima. Even if he wins this one, he has to work on an awful lot – stamina for one.

Tiafoe needs to get his serve # up especially first serves. The forehand needs some Mardy Fish-like repairs or maybe he should train with Nadal some to get some pointers. He gets that first serve up, puts less pressure on the rest of his game, where he can be more creative.

So far Tiafoe surprises me – he shows some of the same competitive spirit today he showed years ago in winning big junior titles against Kozlov like the orange bowl, where he was the youngest winner in history. Similar style to Jack Sock in how he played, with a canny intelligence, though with similar flaws in his game then as well. The great touch he showed at 15 is even better now in his early 20s. He has to be able to route Nakashima.

Not sure who will win this and how Nakashima hasn’t passed out yet. He was looking gassed in set two. If he comes back it’s because he has some reserves nobody knows about. So far I am wary of a lot that’s been written about him, because he looks like he needs some considerable work. His strategy is flat out bad hitting to the strong side of Tiafoe – he did no scouting and it shows. If Nakashima pulls this out that’s good for him. As to his future, he’s got to get a lot better.

Tiafoe wins – served well the final set, broke when he saw Nakashima getting a little nervous serving at the 5-5 game – Nakashima, despite everything including what seemed like exhaustion as the match passed the two hour mark, had the game in hand and squandered it. Tiafoe saw he had a chance, rushed the net to knock off a volley, then let Nakashima make a few errors. That was a good veteran move.

Overall – Nakashima among the few U.S. players to have a good forehand and a good backhand. His serve is solid, his volley technique good. His strategy is bad and he needs a physio and some good coaching so that he doesn’t have to rely on his serve alone to keep him in a match.

Tiafoe escaped a little like houdini here – he was under pressure from Nakashima, even though Nakashima was making a lot of mistakes. Tiafoe was also. He found his composure when he needed it, but this scoreline should remind him that he has to keep his serve % up. He escaped today and will have to forget it quickly, and next time scout Nakashima better. Moving in and attacking the short ball worked when it mattered – sometimes Tiafoe approached on the wrong ball, but rushing the net was a good strategy. If he made that the cornerstone of his game, like Pat Rafter (a good model for him), I think Tiafoe could have a nice career with a lot more ATP titles to his name.

Otherwise, good to see these guys already have a lot of respect for each other. They were very cordial and Tiafoe seems like an encouraging guy. Nakashima may be the near future, but not without some work.

In 1970, when apartheid looked to be permanent and growing, Court was asked about apartheid and she said….”South Africans have this thing better organised than any other country, particularly America. I love South Africa, I’ll go back there any time.”

Interesting how this delightful lady seems to have had issues with blacks and gays in her life.

Sorry catherine, just not true. The comment from Court was in direct response to being asked about Arthur Ashe being denied entry into South Africa because he was black. Just a filthy comment that no one else was making.

And as recently as 2016 Court has made comments where she refers to black people as “coloureds”.

Also her gem about child gays being created on purpose by adults who use mind techniques just like “Hitler did” to get into people’s minds.

Court is a horrible bigot who should not have anything named after her.

Jon – Margaret made the SA quote in 1970. She’s now 77 years old. That was a different time – don’t judge things by the standards of today. There’d be a lot of people in the dock if that were the case, including me. The word ‘coloured’ was still widely in use for much of Court’s lifetime, and Australia is actually a pretty conservative country in many ways – it’s not the advanced liberal haven a lot of people imagine. Margaret grew up in the 1950s. She lives a pretty enclosed life and still adheres to some of the values of her time. That’s not excusing her, just putting things in perspective.

And it’s not a ‘filthy comment’ no one else was making. Plenty of people, particularly in sport, were saying those things, and worse.If you don’t believe me, do some research.

I agree with Scoop. Words are just words – Margaret may well regret them now and she’s certainly never followed up with any actions. She’s an easy target for self-righteous people who want to establish their moral superiority. Life’s not as simple as that. And people can hold contradictory views on many things.

If we go around trying to rewrite history and removing names from places and pulling down statues etc we’re going to be very busy. Winston Churchill had a few attitudes which would be unacceptable these days. But I’m pretty glad he existed.

Instead of vilifying an old lady who probably won’t be around much longer it might be useful if some attention was paid to the willingness of sports people and sports authorities to do business with autocratic, racist and homophobic countries. That’s happening now. I don’t hear many voices raised when sports events are held in murderous regimes where women have few rights and homosexuality is a capital offence.

Wait a minute. What do we have to drag Churchill into this? He was directly responsible for the deaths of almost 3 million Indians. He ordered the transfer of food from India to aid the British war effort and caused starvation in famine-ravaged parts of India. Margaret Court has some opinions, but as far as I can tell, she hasn’t come close to committing genoicde. Of course, Churchill was a well-known racist too . . .

Catherine, I was only being half-serious. You’re right, of course. The evil that men do lives on after them, while the good is oft interred with their bones. (Feels like I should expand on that thought!)

As for me, like most Indians, I don’t hold anything against the British. We have streets named after Winston in India. I thoroughly enjoyed my time living in England and Scotland. Turns out the Scots hate the English more than Indians do. Which is to say, it isn’t an animating feeling about people, just a mild animosity with an idea that exists deep down. Besides, Indians don’t have any claims to the moral high ground. We are in equal parts victims and victimisers.

Frankly, I think all this court naming thing is a complete disgrace. They should all have some imaginative names like Pepsi Arena or BA stadium or Goldman Sachs center. That you allocate prime naming rights without compensation is unconscionable. And the compensation should be huge. The Grand Slams should be embarrassed by this. Build statues all you want, but get revenue for naming rights.

I would like to comment on tennis more often. Unfortunately life intervenes.

“Enjoying sitting this one out”. Kenin will probably win the grand slam this year or Andreescu winning four straight slams or someone doing something and this topic will still be going.

It will always be debated what today’s players owe yesterday’s players, whether a coach mattered in one player’s development or not, who gets credit for what, who should be remembered. Why. We see it now, as people shred the accomplishments of past slam winners – I do too, look no further than my diminishing of the master-work of Thomas Johannson and his Australian victory in 2002 (not as if TJ didn’t play all those matches and win them all).

In the future we may look back on some of today’s results and learn more about them (possibly that there was more good going on than we know, possibly that there were worse things going on, who knows?).

There’s no answer to any of these things. Personally I can hardly remember anything these players say. I can’t recall what Seles said on winning her title in 1990 after the French Open final versus Graf, or Graf’s HOF speech, or anything like that. All I know is Seles was ferocious as she found her game, that her dad mattered a lot to her, and that she was working as hard as possible to get out of the former Yugoslavia because she was an ethnic Hungarian. That’s it, and it’s not a whole lot.

Jeff, I don’t think most Indians think much of Britain or the British. Some awful things happened in the past. And then India managed to do much worse to itself. Some combination of socialism and authoritarianism followed by religious sectarianism. Apparently misguided ideas can be far more harmful than physical harm.

As for Winston, perhaps he was what the world needed at the time. We don’t get to choose the best parts of people. To the extent that Indians care about him nowadays, I suspect it’s because of the Churchill scholarship to study at U of Cambridge.

But returning to tennis, I think greatness in the sport should also be measured by the legacy one leaves. Laver and his cohorts changed the landscape. You could argue that Harry Hopman was far more influential than any other Aussie. My understanding is that Court isn’t nearly in the same league.

In any event, this is all much ado about nothing. Nobody really cares about Court until someone in Australia realizes they need an interesting sound bite. I just wish people would focus on how to grow the sport and increase and improve the pay structure for struggling mid level tennis players. I hope fixing this will be Novak’s lasting contribution to the game.

Jeff – can you stick to what you know about ? When I say Churchill saved us I mean nothing less – Hitler did not defeat Britain although he would have liked to and Churchill was the main reason he didn’t. He was not a peacetime politician, agreed. Who would you have preferred, Hitler or Churchill ? ‘Evil, racist, murderer ?’ Questionable. Americans seem to hate Britain but I’m not sure why. The Revolution was a very long time ago. I notice you still speak our language. What on earth do they teach in US schools ?

British colonial history is complicated. You might read some. Could expand your perspective.

There are hundreds of thousands of Indians (and Pakistanis) in Britain today – they staff the Health Service, are active in politics and flourish in business and academia. Most Indians I know, Hindu and Moslem, seem to bear us no ill will. Perhaps you should visit some time.

I’m sorry this stream has turned so bitter. Myself, I’ve got nothing more to say.

Too many poison pills in the comments thread. Maybe Scoop, Dan should go ahead and close shop on this one. It died even before it was posted.

Catherine, players play tennis so far as I know. Some players have a legacy beyond that – the first player from (x) or (y), or of (x) or (y), etc, or players defying the odds, etc. A lot of that, applause worthy stuff.

I just don’t know about everything else. I don’t think everyone know what runs through Federer’s mind, how they intepret him cussing up a storm these days, etc. Tennis players are people, people are people, what they say will invariably disappoint people. Even a superstar beyond reproach (and if I saw one player’s name I know another comment will sweep in to defend them as being the greatest person in the history of the world).

But I’ll stick with the obvious. Players are people too. Fans may project their wish lists on them to be this and that way and the other way. But it doesn’t change the fact that they are people, and people think all sorts of things. If we had a running stream of Federer’s every thought I’m sure we’d be like PLEASE…NO MORE!

Matty – thank you very much for those comments. Actually the English are, to my mind, a strange race. They aren’t purely ‘English’, being a mixture of so many types, and we carry with us today the imperial burden, that is to say there are many reasons why Britain as a country is viewed unfavourably through the perspective of the past. ‘Lazy and ruthless’ was how someone once described the English. We do have an odd sense of humour. Just as well, considering how often we fail miserably to conquer the world in such things as sport, Murray of course being Scots and Konta Hungarian/Australian.