Tatishvili Gets Her Due

I was concerned that Anna Tatishvili's first round win over Sania Mirza would be lost in the shuffle, but Bonnie DeSimone of espn.com wrote an in-depth piece about it, the second straight story she filed for espn.com about a junior player. Tatishvili lost to Dementieva Saturday in straight sets.

And while I was looking around the NASDAQ-100 website today, I found the transcript from Tatishvili's press conference after her upset of Mirza, which was held after midnight. It got me thinking about some advice that tennis writer extraordinaire Joel Drucker recently gave me-- never ask a player something you could look up yourself (I don't think I've violated that edict too many times). It makes sense to me; you look less like an idiot to players if you come prepared and don't waste their time.

But I argued with him that I hear writers do it all the time with juniors, and we ended up agreeing that since there's a lot less information out there, it's not quite the faux pas it would be with an established pro. Anyway, no one could have expected the sixteen-year-old wild card with a good, but not great, junior resume would topple a Top 50 player, so I guess this press conference, which is a weird mix of who-are-you-anyway questions and compliments, is an instance where the normal standards don't apply.