The name Anna Kournikova instantly conjures up images of a her on a beach lounging around in a sexy bikini, wearing a variety of outfits for a Maxim photo-shoot, or the myriad of lascivious photos of her floating around the internet bent over or leaning forward during a tennis game in an attempt to maximize the intense sexuality that revolves around her. It's almost bizarre that it's not as easy as you would think to find good action pictures of her actually playing in tennis tournaments. I know, I know...you say that I should expect this because isn't that what she's known for? Isn't she the tennis star that was never good at winning anything so she cashed in on her good looks receiving more attention than she deserved? Why yes it is true she eventually rested her money laurels on her amazing good looks, but it's not true that she wasn't ever good at winning. In fact she was a champion.

We've all heard the jokes time and time again. To wit: Jay Leno - "Anna Kournikova is apparently dating singer Enrique Iglesias. You hear this? Said in the paper he had three tennis courts installed in his house so that she could practice. And today she said, 'Practice, what's that?'"

Oh my how wonderfully witty. :roll:But it's not that Leno is unique in this regard, it's practically impossible for the subject of Kournikova to come up without a standard reference to what a crappy tennis player she is. Considering how much smaller the audience is for the sport of tennis in general, this perception is sad to say taken as fact to the general public. Yet somehow this seemingly awful player that only had her inherent hotness on her side managed to kick and claw her way up to be the #8 player in the world. Furthermore she managed to stay in the top ten for a couple of years and stayed in the top 20 even after injury began to chip away at her endurance. Do you have any idea how many professional players wish they could ever crack the top 20 much less the top 10 in their lifetime?

A lot of Kournikova's perceived failure as a tennis player comes from her not being able to win a Grand Slam tournament -- U.S. Open, The Australian Open, Wimbledon, and The French Open -- these are the biggies and despite getting close a few times, she's never quite put one away. She racked up a number of wins over a lot of very talented opponents and managed to stay ranked very high as she put in good numbers, but eventually her game just wasn't perfect enough to consistently beat the top 10 folks enough to claim the ultimate prize. Yet...what you say if I told you she did win a championship and in a Grand Slam tournament -- twice in fact? Whaaaaaaa? I didn't know that? Indeed you don't because it wasn't in singles, but in doubles.

Don't let anybody tell you differently, double tennis is taken very seriously by tennis players especially these days. Although it doesn't get as much attention that the solo tournaments do, the players involved in them are deadly serious and a lot of solo champions (such as the Williams sisters) work very hard to improve their double play so they can win consistently. The groundstroke issues in Kournikova's game that could be exploited in solo play by the top players meant little in doubles as her aggressive baseline skills as well as excellent ball control were greatly amplified by the different dynamic of this type of tennis game. Teaming up with Martina Hingis, Kournikova managed to win 16 tournament titles including two at the Australian open and were ranked as the #1 doubles team for almost two years. In mixed doubles (playing with a guy) she also managed to get into the finals of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Gosh...that really sounds like a big plate of failure to me. If you knew somebody that achieved even half of that, would you consider them a failure?

So where does all this come from? Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, and more sex and the aggressive marketing of it by the Tennis folks. She came out of nowhere and was so incredibly gorgeous that people just couldn't get enough of her. The more photo spreads that Kournikova did, the more tickets she would sell for her games and boy oh boy did the Tennis higher ups like that. People were talking...about TENNIS! You had to be there but good golly it was crazy as people would file in incredibly early just to watch her practice in her...um bicycle shorts. Which were snug. :oops:

But eventually foot and back injuries began to take their toll and as Kournikova began slipping too far to statistically make it into the Grand Slam tournaments, the officials began kinda sorta squeaking her in quoting some arcane numbers as a sort of dark horse player hoping she could hang in there as long as possible. Because you see, when Kournikova played they sold 30% more tickets. That's a lot. But eventually this built resentment and as she began to lean more heavily towards modeling the backlash perception was that she was a failure.

So here we are all learned up and everything. I'm not even a Kournikova fan and yet as a casual general tennis fan it's always irked me every time I hear yet another joke about what an awful player she was as it just seems so petty and...well ignorant. I guess it's just so much easier to believe somebody that pretty is a failure as it assures the ugly folks such as myself that all is well with the universe. These days she still plays a lot of celebrity matches as well as charity events and just recently at the 2010 Wimbledon she even teamed up with Hingus once again for an invitational and won. So if you've bothered to read this at all, at the very least the next time you hear one of those jokes you can think back upon her 16 professional championships and state "That's funny, I remember her being a champion".