Whine of the Week: Maria Sharapova

Maria Sharapova, thanks to her poorly thought out comments in her post-semifinal loss press conference, is getting picked on by the press. The comments that started the stories:

“Take your note pads, take your pencils, take your grunt-o-meters down, the fashion police, put everything away and just watch the match from the fans’ perspective. I know I’m going to be seeing headlines: ‘Maria can’t get past the semis’ and ‘Maria can’t finish it off in the third’ but take all that away and just look at the tennis that we both played.”

So this week, she was chosen as the Whine of the Week on MSNBC/NBCSports.com. Maybe she didn't expect this at the time, but everyone else saw it coming as soon as she vented any frustration. I think part of this is because she is played up as being so mentally tough. For her to start nit-picking about people not liking her tennis dress or her shrieking ("grunt" is too kind) immediately after a loss just makes her seem mentally weak (at least off the court). I also think she is an easy target because she hasn't delivered on any big wins since Wimbledon, has started saying that the tour schedule is too strenuous and doesn't really let the press into her head. Her statements above also seem to reflect her own insecurity and unhappiness with her tennis since that Wimbledon - as I didn't see much negative press about her play at all.

Our Whiner of the Week, Maria Sharapova, has yet to learn this simple truth. She won the first Grand Slam final she ever got to at the age of 17. That was in 2004. She hasn’t won a grand slam since, but last year she did manage to lose three semifinals.

It’s only natural that fans and media alike would begin to wonder whether all the money, fame and modeling contracts Sharapova picked up with the Wimbledon win have distracted her from her game. Given that she hasn’t been able to put away big matches, it’s also legitimate to ask whether she’s choked.