What is your problem with the Russian tennis players?? Are you jealous that it is not a french player who is the highest payed female athlete? Or you think everyone else, but you are so stupid that they do not see that "she is a fraud"? I really dont't get your fixation with the success of russian female tennis players. And do not give me silly things like "it is all an illusion", etc. Illusions DO NOT win championships, DO NOT become highest paying athletes, DO NOT stay in top-ten for years, etc. Do not make a fool of yourself by putting down people who proved successful ten times over.

larussophobe is just jealous because she is an old, ugly, wrinkled pig… that’s it. even if sharapova won all of the grand slams in one year, la schizo-russophobe would still be a hater.

Natalia: My problem is that the highest paid player should be the best player, and Sharapova is not even close to being the best. She is being rewarded for being pretty, which has nothing to do with sport. Nobody who pays to watch tennis cares about whether she is pretty or not, and at the NASDAQ tournament recently she played to a half-empty stadium and was booed off the court twice. She's destroying the women's game because her quality of play does not match her celebrity. Over and over and over again she loses to inferior, much lower ranked players. That is bad for the game and bad for women's chances to gain equality.

I have no fixation on Russian women's tennis, I have only devoted a tiny number of posts on this blog to that topic. I have exposed disastrous Russian peformance in many other areas of sport as well. However, Maria is a perfect microcosm for Russia, she's all image and no substance. Just as Russia pretends to be a signifcant country because of oil and nuclear weapons, Maria pretends to be a significant tennis player because of her looks (which in fact are quite average by model standards). And when tested, she always fails. The fact that you can't see that explains why Russia continues to degenerate into obscurity.

You don't even try to point to any actual accomplishment of Maria, a recent match that was of high quality, an occasion where she beat a higher-ranked player, because you can't. Instead, you try to launch a personal attack on me to try to change the subject. Truth hurts, doesn't it? If only Russians could learn to accept the pain.

ANONYMOUS: You are just angry because you were wrong about Sharapova and I was right. Your attempt to make a childish personal attack on me shows that you know this. You don't even try to defend Maria's pathetic record against lower-ranked opponents because you know you can't. Your comment, of course, would be just a little more significant if you had ever seen me, but then people like you never care about facts, do they?

It's rather hard to be jealous of someone being booed off the court at the NASDAQ tournament and losing a tournament she had won twice previously to someone ranked more than 70 places below her. I hope fate never delivers to me such a cruel humiliation as that.

Just simply get over yourself, will ya..You do not hear what others are trying to say and just repeat your "they are bad players, blah, blah.." like mantra. Russian female tennis players are very good, they win tournaments, they are in the top ten (last year or the year before there were 4 or 5 Russians out of ten best players), they become highest paid athletes, etc. It is not THEIR problem that some russophobe believes that they do not deserve it, it is this russophobe's problem.. Sharapova is a great tennis player too, had she not won Wimbledon, she wouldn't have been that famous. There are a lot of other pretty girls on the court (Czech Hantukova, for example), but noobody pays her for her looks. So leave Russian tennis be, your angry passages do not add to your credibility..

NATALIA:

What a classic Russian contradiction! You write: "Sharapova is a great tennis player too, had she not won Wimbledon, she wouldn't have been that famous."

How can she be "great" yet famous only because of Wimbledon?

Maria has lost over and over and over again TO MUCH LOWER RANKED PLAYERS. "Great" players don't do that.

Maria was booed of the court TWICE by a HALF EMPTY STADIUM at the Nasdaq tournament this year. That doesn't happen to great players.

At the Birmingham tournament, two UNSEEDED Americans ejected two SEEDED Russians and pushed a third higher-ranked Russian to long matches that the Russian could easily have lost.

The quality of play by Russian players is atrocious and boring, and the TV ratings for the French Open are much higher without Russians in the matches than with them.

These are all facts, yet you simply ignore them, in the classic style of a Russian propagandist.

Meanwhile, your only evidence that Russians are good is that several are highly ranked. That is just like saying Russia is a rich powerful country because it has a lot of oil. In other words, it's an illusion.

No Russian woman has even PLAYED FOR, much less WON, any grand slam tournament between Sharapova at Wimbledon TWO YEARS ago and Kuznetsova at this year's French Open. Kuznetsova was TERRIBLE at the French,and the ONLY REASON she won the U.S. Open two years ago was because she got to play AGAINST ANOTHER RUSSIAN in the finals.

Only one Russian woman in HISTORY has beaten a non-Russian in the finals of a grand slam, and that was Sharapova, who hasn't been in a grand slam final since and who just lost the warmup to Wimbledon to a player not even ranked 80th in the world.

Anyone who knows anything about tennis (which is clearly not you, you're obviously not a fan, yet spouting off anyway without knowledge) knows that Russians are not respected for their game among the players and the audience hates them. Dementieva is a joke, she can't even serve and is regularly ridiculed for it by commentators. Myskina played great at the French Open two years ago and since has totally disappeared. There was much talk about Petrova at the French, then she went down to disastrous defeat.

In other words, Russians are certainly capable of freakish good luck and once in a while even moments of inspired performance. But the rest of the time, they are ruining the fan base of the game.

R u that stupid, or u r just pretending so that it was hard to argue with you? HOW COULD 2 RUSSIANS BE IN A GRAND SLAM FINAL IF THEY DIDN'T WIN EVERYONE ELSE IN THE COMPETITION BEFORE THAT??

To your stupid question "How can she be "great" yet famous only because of Wimbledon?" - 1.She won quite a few other tournaments, 2. You cannot win Wimbledon when you're 17 unless you are a great player.

NATALIA: Yes, more personal abuse, the only way a Russian can respond to facts. That is why your country is doomed.

The fact is that the two grand slam finals that involved Elena Dementieva were farces and turned off the whole tennis world. The matches were played without any of the typical displays of great skill or drama. Russians gave the sport a bad name. If you had a clue about tennis you'd know that too.

Moreover, the fact is that Russians have only won a single grand slam by beating a non-Russian. Russians can't handle the games of the top-flight foreigners, who are on a much higher level, and all the players say this as well.

Sharapova won Wimbledon in a pure fluke. She was being destroyed by Lindsey Davenport in her semi-finals and then the match was repeated interrupted by rain. When she met Serena Williams in the finals, Williams was suffering from an injury, and she has now almost disappeared from the tour because of that injury. Since then, Sharapova has not made another grand slam final.

What significant tournament wins does Sharapova have this year? You don't name a single one. You are just blowing smoke.

Over and over this year and last year, Sharapova has been ejected from tournaments by much lower ranked players. Go the WTA website and check it out for yourself.

Try to do some research and contribute some value before you attack this blog. Otherwise, you just look like a total fool.

NATALIA: If you want to read about the wretched, embarrassing performance of ALL Russians at the French Open, as just one example, see here:

http://russophobe.blogspot.com/2006/06/roland-garros-review-russians-are.html