withthatflow

pwhl expansion starting at the same time as pride month is actually insane when you think about it

i'm going to believe casper ruud will pull a late-bloomer stan wawrinka first slam at 29 until the day he turns 30. and then i'm going to believe he'll wild card his way into winning his dream slam goran ivanišević-style until the second he retires. and even then. i will never lose hope, i will never surrender.

Also since I’m already on here complaining about things let me say that the way we talk about players going through mental crisis in this sport is absolutely disgusting and it ultimately comes down to being the same issue as the ‘fake mto’ allegations. It doesn’t make them inherently weak, it just shows another aspect of how unhealthy and draining the modern sports schedule is and how by creating these big narratives about them just leads to pressure literally no human could ever deal with. Some of the things people have written and said about both Coco and Iga these past two days are absolutely uncalled for, them going through whatever they’re going through doesn’t take away from their past achievements and, above all, doesn’t make them ‘unworthy competitors’.

I think what makes the possibility of zverev winning this slam also so horrific is that it’s not just going to be someone winning who doesn’t deserve it, but how it’s also going to reinforce the normalisation of just accepting abusers in sports spaces. Tennis is not the first sport that this has happened too, in fact we just had a club winning one of the biggest trophies in football for a second year in a row who has someone accused of rape as one of their key players. But it’s absolutely disheartening to see sports institutions bow down to these men again and again and give them more power and ultimately make all of these spaces less safe for women. And it’s especially disgusting if you consider that for a sport that prides itself on equality it systematically ignores the abuse of women. Not just on the women’s tour with coaches and team members, but also with abusers on the men’s tour. None of that is normal and should be accepted but both the tours and the media just seem to act like there’s nothing wrong and in fact completely fine. Then I remember that the media’s main focus for women still seems to be on getting women interested in sports through ‘fashion and gossip’, as if we’re incapable of getting interested in the sports itself, and it’s like yeah, of course you’re not taking any of this seriously. Because their golden boys will always be more important than anything else and god forbid any of these men actually have to take responsibility for their actions because that could ‘waste away their talent’. Meanwhile when a female generational talent gets wasted away because of abuse from their team members none of them really talk about it and everyone is just supposed to look away and pretend to not see what is going on. If you do show empathy and concern you get told you’re ‘parasocial and speculating’ because god forbid public institutions actually try to help the women stuck in toxic environments. No, we’re more busy with giving power to abusers and treating women like an afterthought because why change a broken system when it has worked for so long.