Not Quite 30-Love

#YouCantMakeMe, #LinzCrisis

#YouCantMakeMe, #LinzCrisis

‘But you can’t make me.’ Was the first thing I heard exiting the toilet in the women’s locker room. My perfect timing had landed me in the middle of the negotiation between tour supervisor Birgit and player Ulli Fischer. I stepped back out of view.

‘Ulli, your agent has already agreed to you reading this statement, and we go on court in twenty minutes.’

‘I don’t care what he agreed. Nobody asked me.’

‘If we had asked you, you would have told us to go to your agent.’ Lesson number one when working with players: ‘Talk to my agent’ is code for ‘I don’t want to do this’.

‘I can’t do this. It is in English. I will say it if you let me do it in German.’

‘We need it to be in English, so everyone can understand.’

‘My English is bad.’

‘Don’t be silly. Your English is perfect.’

‘What if I get something wrong? Everyone will hate me.’

‘Nobody will hate you. This is a good thing you are doing.’

‘Everybody hates the WTA. They will hate me too.’

There were no winners here. Birgit had to get her to do it and if I were Ulli I would want to be as far away from this clusterfuck as possible. Birgit pulled out the big guns.

‘Don’t you want to show that you care about these poor dead children?’

‘That is very mean to me. You should not say that.’

‘I’m sorry. But this is very important to women’s tennis. You all want to be able to keep playing tennis, don’t you?’ Birgit was getting truly desperate. But sponsorships dropping out was a real possibility if we couldn’t stem the hate.

‘Show me what you want me to say. I’m not saying yes. Just show me.’

I sneaked a peak at Birgit and Ulli looking at the statement. Fingers crossed it’s short. Ulli kept shaking her head as she read. ‘What does “premier” mean?’

‘It means important.’

‘Can I just say “important”?’

‘It’s not exactly the same. You better say “premier”. Why don’t you practise reading it?’

**

‘Today we are sad at the tragic loss of precious young lives at a Philadelphian high school in the USA. Young people should feel safe at school. They should be able to learn without fear everywhere in the world. The WTA represents a group of young women from nearly one hundred countries, proud to be able to participate in one of the world’s premier sports. We are proud to represent a place where women can learn and grow and feel safe. We wish this for all young women and men. Can we please have a minute’s silence for all the people in the world who are not as lucky as we are today?’

**

Holy s**t. That’s a big statement. No mention of g*n violence, no mention of the mistake. It feels important, who knows how it will go down. I wouldn’t want to be reading it.

‘I don’t want to read this. You can’t make me.’ Said Ulli.

**

Shit.