Ignacio Buse is 35th in the world rankings. On a stream, he said that a player ranked 1000th would beat Elena Rybakina. He added that he would have beaten Serena Williams when she was at her best. The criticism followed, with the word “respect” featuring prominently.
Our intern decided to start with the simple part: finding the match.
Silly question, but: when did he play Rybakina? I looked for the date, the tournament, the score. There’s nothing. I’m told it’s hypothetical, fine, but what does that mean? Because everyone is arguing about the result as if there were a scorecard filed somewhere.
He then learned that the same debate had already happened last December. With no match either.
The journalist José Moron takes the view that Buse stated facts, on the grounds that the level of men’s tennis and the level of women’s tennis are radically different. Mostly he finds the discussion pointless: “I find it stupid that this debate keeps coming back, when it already happened last December.” He gives two reasons for these regular returns: to talk down women’s tennis, or to get attention, since this sort of topic goes viral quickly.
Maxime copied both reasons into his folder. He is still looking for the third one, the one where somebody actually plays the point.
Me, a set against a top 10, I hold that. On crushed brick, Tuesday evening, with a fresh restring. Nobody has ever offered to let me prove it, and two practice sessions away, mind you, that suits me rather well.
Elena Rybakina is the new world No 1. The episode was picked up on Thursday morning, at twenty past nine.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
