#a lot of the sound mixing of matches uploaded to youtube is truly abysmal. it's deafen the entire neighbourhood or not hear a word

[batsplat]

about relationships with those rivals i am thinking of one of the recent wta hot girls

“Do you have amongst the players good friends? Do you prefer to keep your distance because they're your rivals?” Qinwen: “My answer is very clear: I prefer always to keep the distance with the player. Has a lot of competition with me. I am, like, the sensitive type with my heart. I don't feel if I become friends with someone and I have to compete with them on court, I feel I'm not able to 100% focus and fight. When I have to scream, ‘C'mon,’ I'm not able to do that because I will feel a bit weird. In my heart, I feel if it's a friend, I really want she win or she feels good in her life. This is the opposite side of a tennis tournament. Once I figure out that, I decided don't try to make a friend on tour because there's so many people outside of the tennis world. Why I have to just make friends here? I come here to compete with them, to win the match. Yeah, that's my opinion (smiling).”

https://x.com/thetennisletter/status/1852351810079502451

yeah the girl who doesn’t shake hands with her opponents after losing a match🫶

wait ahah I'd answered this ask as a follow up to the TENNIS one from yesterday where I moaned about men's tennis some more, not the one about valentino and his relationship with his rivals. L for reading comprehension, though I suppose it is quite fitting I'd been thinking about zheng anyway. not going to rejig the whole thing, so here's what I initially wrote --

icl I fully typed out zheng's name in that last post before cutting myself off and going. I can't do that justice in a pithy way. but honestly lol that's been one of the funniest little subplots of the year. like the olympics were..? so odd..? on several levels, but zheng's whole drama with navarro where she was randomly accused of lacking respect was a real highlight. just completely came out of nowhere. obviously we've had a bit more of that energy recently - telling leylah's father to shut up at wuhan, the drama with the line judge in the final against sabalenka, just some generally rather frosty handshakes. now obviously (minus the line judge thing which I'm always quite eh about) I am in full support of this sort of thing. it's fun!! she's a character, she has insane levels of self confidence, she has SO much aura and now she's beginning to have the results to back it up. I'll fully admit I was a sceptic before the second half of the season, but she's really made a step. (does still have a massive sabalenka problem lol, she needs to do something about that next season.) super curious to see about where she'll take it next year

I do have to admit I'm always a bit wary of athletes saying they're not there to make friends, because a lot of the time the most intense rivalries do kinda... rely on a little bit of an interpersonal connection? not necessarily a FRIENDSHIP, but you do kinda need to engage with the other person in some way. you need to be interested in them, at least, which zheng doesn't seem to be at all. like just on a sporting level, good on her, I'm also not a fan of how a few of the other players are behaving around her - it feels quite clique-y. but just in general, ideally you want a bit of a vibe between players for the very best sporting narratives do develop, which obviously means you can't COMPLETELY shut yourself off from your competitors. then again, beggars can't be choosers. if zheng goes around and causes penko-type low level drama at the top of the game for the next however many years, sure, sign me up. prickly characters are a mainstay trope of the wta tour and it is a tradition I obviously want to see continued

-- and as a little addendum that actually engages with the ask I was sent not the ask I imagined in my head:

yeah no I think you're making a really good comparison there!! and as I've already said in the tags under the valentino post, I DO get where zheng is coming from on this. still don't think it's THAT tough to get yourself to hate someone in the moment, but if you're actually playing professionally and have to crush the spirit of your friend?? who knows how you'd deal with that... idk man, that's tough. something like kasatkina comforting mirra who's crying after their final would KILL me, like that's a kid!! a kid dasha has an actual relationship with!! all those quarterfinal losses medvedev's handed rublev, it's like?? three I think at this point?? that's the godfather of his CHILD - medvedev's talked about this in some detail and says he can separate those things completely, which, y'know, good for him, but I think it would also be quite normal if rublev had a little bit of resentment in his heart over that!! the thing about professional sports is that it is basically built for freaks - and a lot of that is to do with the all-consuming competitive drive. I don't feel like it's absurd to argue that needing a bit of distance from your rivals could be seen as... idk, more normal than just flipping like a switch every time you step on and off the court, or on and off the bike or whatever

and I do think it's quite admirable that zheng knows herself to such an extent and can set those boundaries for herself. but... yeah, idk, to me the exact stuff she's describing there is a pretty underrated element of valentino's competitive make-up. it's not just about needing enemies to motivate himself - maybe, just maybe, he struggles to find it within himself to crush friends. he HAS to get some distance, because the friction between these two roles - of rival and friend - makes him uncomfortable. I still low-key think he did approach the whole casey rivalry in a pretty healthy, sensible way... now obviously, casey wouldn't agree - and his emotional needs were not being met in that situation but. y'know. we know what the alternative looks like, and funnily enough I don't think casey would have been a massive fan of that either. again, I'm not saying getting involved in five feuds is the sign of an empath. but also fundamentally I do think there's some fairly normal psychological processes underlying this stuff, like it's not all just freak behaviour. man finds it tricky to deny the hopes and dreams of his friends, more at ten