Elena Rybakina got an odd comparison from French Open semifinalist Andrea Petkovic recently. Speaking on the Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast, Petkovic said Rybakina might be finding herself in the same situation as Harry Kane soon. Kane is a soccer player/footballer who can score goals seemingly at will but then he appears to diminish in bigger matches and when his team is going for a championship.
The entire reference is unfair to Rybakina for several reasons, however. For one, the tennis player is only 24 years old and has a long career ahead of her. The main reason that the comparison is not right is that Rybakina has won a Grand Slam before. She won Wimbledon in 2022.
Maybe Rybakina sometimes does fall short of winning titles when she is the top seed and seemingly much better than other players in the field, but that’s tennis. That kind of thing happens to every player. If the comparison between her and Kane is based on Rybakina not getting to number one, that is also unfair. Kane is great but he is not Lionel Messi and Rybakina is not Iga Swiatek.
Petkovic said on Stubbs’ podcast, “I’m just afraid of the Harry Kane situation…He’s such a great scorer and then it comes to an important game and he just can’t find the goal and he’s missing big chances and now he’s getting that reputation. He’s not that young anymore and he’s gotten a reputation, in England and beyond, that he can’t score in big games. And I hope that doesn’t happen for Rybakina.”
Again, the argument should be moot. Rybakina has won a major. She likely will win another one at some point in her career as well.
In far sillier news, Marin Cilic – or, to be more clear, Marin Cilic’s X handle – responded to a Clay Tennis article about Argentina losing an ATP 250 event by saying, “I 98988014 i893nj.” This, of course, was confusing to fans and readers of Cilic’s X posts. What exactly did it mean?
Haha apologies, my little 2y old wanted to share his thoughts on X 🤣🤣🤣
— Marin Cilic (@cilic_marin) February 25, 2024
As it turns out, Cilic did not post the tweet at all but instead, his 2-year-old son had grabbed Cilic’s phone (we assume) and shared the post. That is fairly impressive because the child not only had to type random numbers but also hit “Post.” I assume we will hear more about Cilic’s son in 20 years when he is a major social media influencer.
