Melissa Kenny writes Racquet’s See You In Court, a regular advice column in which Melissa Kenny, a famously mediocre lifelong player, heeds reader questions about tennis. She also writes Hard Hitting, a Substack about the thrills and frustrations of recreational tennis.
At long last! This weekend, the world’s best woman, Aryna Sabalenka, will take on irrelevant misogynist and world number 672, Nick Kyrgios, in a birdbrained spectacle that will surely spur an embarrassment of riches if the riches are cheap, widely circulated Instagram reels; along with Dubaians in seats and eyeballs on screens to generate riches in the prosaic sense. Prize money isn’t being disclosed, but we can assume there are enough zeros to silence any squirmy feelings Sabalenka may or may not have about walking back the progress of her predecessors.
The above isn’t flattering but it isn’t terribly embellished, either. For the sake of a point; counterpoint setup, I’ll say that naturally, I find much of Kyrgios’ buffoonery entertaining. It’s also quite likely that Kyrgios’ upbringing—like mine—in very white, very racist Australia nurtured the shameless adult bully he is today. But context notwithstanding, the fact remains: it’s a ghastly idea to platform a man in the name of gender dynamics who, in 2022, aired a “low-key” fondness for Andrew Tate (that he’s since tried to scrub from the internet); in 2023, pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-girlfriend; and famously, in 2024, brought us “second serve,” a cowardly twitter comment aimed at Jannik Sinner, given Kyrgios dated Kalinskaya—an ownable asset—first. I may or may not have chuckled at “second serve” because I am a WIP (woman in progress.) Shame on us both.