In the Sept. 7 issue of The New Yorker, Lillian Ross wrote about female Russian tennis players, one of whom, Elena Vesnina, was quoted as saying: "You have too many things in America - you have too much fun stuff. Here you have everything so you do not have to fight. We're strong fighters. We have this fire."
Vesnina's fire was put out in the third round of the U.S. Open, part of a complete dousing of Russian women before the quarterfinals that included the #1 woman player in the world Dinara Safina. Watching Safina - and Nadia Petrova and Svetlana Kuznetsova - you would have thought the distinguishing feature of the Russians was not fire but nerves. Four of them - including the statuesque shriekers Elena Dementieva (5'11") and Maria Sharapova (6'3") - were snuffed out by the 17-year-old, 5'6" Melanie Oudin, who hails from Marietta, Georgia. The American, too-much-fun-stuff Georgia.
I wonder if Melanie reads The New Yorker.
