A great man once told me “I would let her gutter stomp my balls in high heels”… At the time I lacked the capability to fully appreciate this sentiment, and only very recently I have come to terms with what he truly meant. My realization came when I visited The Hobart International female tennis tournament. It was a pleasant time filled with expensive food and even more expensive drinks. So I offer many commendations to the family member for spilling his top dollar coffee on the unlucky patrons below us.
Completely avoiding the subject of stomping balls and spilt milk, allow me to discuss how bad the media production for this tournament was. The master of ceremonies was an obese glamorized postman that I’ve never seen in any other media. He was so lazy that he stayed in the same stand for the entire tournament and simply panned the camera around the stadium yelling at people to dance from afar. It worked for a while but as the cold Taswegian night loomed over us, even the promise of signed tennis balls wasn’t enough to get the crowd to their feet. By this point, the female tennis players would have to sign my literal balls to get me dancing.
In an odd way, I’ve always found local productions charming for their attempt to appear professional. Some say “you can’t put lipstick on a pig”; but I say “that lipstick on a pig is at least more amusing than the average woman.” Some of my fondest live sporting memories are stacking KFC buckets to the sky, crowd waves and the mass celebration of a fish farming mascot that was just a giant salmon in shoes. An excuse to drink and simple crowd interactions is always my purpose for going to sporting events – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Now these crowd interactions work best when the sport is either slow moving or has many stoppages throughout. It has been almost perfected in the field of T20 Cricket, specifically the Big Bash League. However, I soon realized that this methodology cannot and should not be purely reproduced in a tennis tournament.
Even though tennis matches can be long winded, the breaks are minimal in duration. So to my surprise the tournament decided to fill these gaps with female pop music and drab monologues from the host mentioned above. This would be somewhat acceptable; however the audio production was so poor in quality that they lazily continued playing the music throughout the tennis matches entirety. This musical playlist was merely 20 songs long, meaning that we had to listen to songs multiple times over. Being the politest and whitest sport in history, tennis etiquette forces the audience to be almost silent during play. So it seemed absurd that I had to remain silent while we listened to ‘Katy Perry’s – Firework’ for the sixth time.
I imagine only in Hobart we would invite the best and most beautiful tennis players from around the world: just too slowly torture them with ABBA’s greatest hits for our own amusement. Despite even the most frustrating and failed parts of this event, I still found it charming for its display of unaware local behavior. Ignoring my negative critiques, I still truly enjoyed this tournament and was amazed at many of the aspects.
So, let’s return to the gutter stomping of my balls in heels or preferably tennis shoes. The various female tennis players I witnessed were all superb. However the highlight for this tournament was a Kazahkstani woman named Yulia Putintseva. She was the epitome of passion and won the hearts of the crowd with her fiery temper. Her performance included screaming Kazahkstani obscenities, smashing tennis rackets and even biting herself. It was clear to us all that this was a player that would refuse to be defeated; even when facing a player that far outranked her. She earned the loudest applause from the audience that night, and she deserved it. I would happily give this Kazahkstani princess an Australian visa even if it meant being married to her for a mere hour.
Her celebration shows that the crowd isn’t necessarily seeking the most talented players, but rather we seek the most passionate. We want to see someone strong, fierce and zealous. An underdog story will always outweigh the story of born perfection. So when I hear the phrase “I would let her gutter stomp my balls in high heels” I now understand. For we all seek the most hardened figures to exhibit their fury for our fascinations.
So my little Miss Putintseva, grab those heels and meet me at the local curb: we’ve got a romantic date to go to.
