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Sports Watch
SUMMER can be a bummer. The colleges are out and there's no Rainbow football or June Jones to talk about. Fortnight dull
without KournikovaThe NBA playoffs are over and so is its flesh-market draft.
Major League Baseball? Well, the Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago White Sox are making it interesting this season.
So are the New York Mets. But they're about the only exciting boys of summer.
Thankfully, there's golf. To play, not to watch or read about, unless Tiger Woods is playing in a tournament somewhere.
Wimbledon tennis, you say?
The only good thing about Wimbledon is that it lasts a fortnight. Fortnight.
Sounds classy, upper crusty doesn't it?
It's British for a period of two weeks, a contraction of "fourteen nights."
And especially because of Wimbledon, summer's the only time you'll ever see that word used in America's sports pages.
But Wimbledon's over and done with for me. It's over even though it's not over.
My interest in the first Wimbledon of the century lasted considerably less than a fortnight. So much for 14 nights.
Why?
It's because Anna Kournikova lost in the second round. Why else did you think I was interested in Wimbledon?
Thanks to the Russian tennis teen queen, I got smitten with the sport for the first time since she reached the semifinals at Wimbledon two years ago.
Why, I hadn't watched women's tennis since Chris Evert retired. And before Chris, Gorgeous Gussie Moran, whose laced panties shocked the folks at Wimbledon.
Sexist?
Don't blame me. I didn't put Anna Kournikova on the cover of Sports Illustrated, although like thousands of fans, we're glad that SI did. What's next? Anna Kournikova in SI's swimsuit edition?
You notice, she wasn't posed with a tennis racket either. Rather, SI pictured her lying on a gossamer pillow. Inside, there were photos of her wearing skintight shorts and a gold miniskirt.
I figure it had to be a miniskirt because the magazine was saving the rest of the gold to paint Brian Viloria's body with it.
Anyway, Kournikova featured on the cover of the leading sports weekly magazine in America.
Not bad for someone who has never won any tennis tournament.
With that in mind, you can't say that Anna K. was a victim of the SI jinx, can you?
THERE was nothing to jinx. How can you put a hex on someone who never won anything anyway?
Tennis is in a bit of a dilemma. Its prettiest face is still looking for her first victory.
At least when Jan Stephenson was billed as golf's glamour girl, she won tournaments.
Let's hope Kournikova wins a tournament one of these days. Otherwise, she'll be relegated to the same fate as golfer Laura Baugh, another pretty face who never won a tournament.
Anna's early exit from Wimbledon must have saddened Britain's tabloids. She has a face that would have sold thousands of copies.
Just imagine. A picture or two a day. For a fortnight.
A veritable Kournicopia, that girl.
Forget winning titles. Anna's winning looks are enough to make tennis an appealing sport to a lot of impressionable young men. And geezers, too.
Oh, well. Until the football 'Bows take the field, there's always the Anna Kournikova official Web site to browse during the lazy days of summer.
Bill Kwon has been writing about
sports for the Star-Bulletin since 1959.