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Just too much to handle
Clay king Rafael Nadal has accused the ATP of failing to listen to players’ wishes by packing too many clay tournaments into a short space of time. The Spaniard says the heavy workload will be to blame if he fails to defend his French Open title on May 25. “These people are destroying Europe,” he said. “No one is listening to the players. We have to thank the people who decided the calendar for what they have done to us and to the tournaments.”
Starting with a clean slate
Bulgarian Sesil Karatantcheva is on the hunt for trophies as she makes her comeback from a two-year drugs hiatus. The only female player to have been suspended for steroid abuse, Karatantcheva, who was ranked 35th in the world in 2005, won her first WTA match in Morocco recently. Still only 18, the player says that she has learned from her mistakes. “Basically this is what I’m trying to do: Just kind of clean my name, and make people like me again,” she said. “Now I feel a lot more mature and I feel more ready to face whatever comes with tennis. I had a tough puberty — tattoos, earrings, I had it all. It is something you need to go through so you can move on.”
Dad pays a price for haste
Pushy parents have been a feature of the sport for a long time, but one American recently had a brush with the law over his over-the-top efforts. Robert Kadera, 65, landed his aeroplane on a golf course fairway in Lincolnshire on March 1 in a bid to get his son to a tennis lesson on time. He was charged with reckless conduct and endangering the life or health of a child. Kadera, now on bail, turned himself in to local police and is due to appear in court on May 13 to answer the charges.
Mauresmo rises by default
Amelie Mauresmo has made it back into the top 20, but probably not in a way that she would have liked. The French star jumped from No 21 to No 19, despite inactivity on the WTA Tour, but only thanks to the fact that Alona Bondarenko and Nadia Petrova have dropped out — Petrova from No 20 to No 22 and Bondarenko from No 19 to No 25. Mauresmo sparked speculation that she may be close to quitting the game after a run of recent bad results.
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