MVN - Most Valuable Network

A Flower in Bloom but a Single Night Washed Away by Wild Winds and Rain

By pucksandbooks, OnFrozenBlog

Washington isn’t a city of vertical architecture, but among the 10- and 12-story office buildings and hotels surrounding the new professional team tennis stadium, home of the Washington Kastles, dozens of men could be seen standing out on terraces, verandas, rooftops, or pressed hard against office glass looking down and out onto the tennis court Wednesday night. More than a few were armed with binoculars.

Really hardcore tennis fans, perhaps? What, you didn’t know that D.C. is mad about its Wednesday night professional team tennis — so much so that $500-an-hour attorneys billing from on high would stop their labor (but not necessarily their billing) and catch a bit of the Kastles?

Ok, so maybe, just maybe, Anna Kournikova’s arrival in Washington with the St. Louis Aces had a little to do with the single-gender spying from on high.

Wednesday night I was all prepared to pursue this storyline at Kastles Stadium at CityCenterDC: whose arrival in Washington this year was the bigger news occasion, Pope Benedict’s or Kournikova’s?

About an hour into the evening I would earn a good Catholic spanking for the temerity of such an inquiry, from a God who may not necessarily have had vengeance in mind but sure seemed less focused on Wednesday’s slate of baseball than I would have preferred. At 8:20, with but one non-Kournikova match completed, the mid-summer skies opened on His ordering and unleashed a fury that for most of the nearly 2,500 in attendance ended their gaze upon the Russian ingenue.

Wednesday had been billed by the Kastles (cleverly, in my opinion) as “Guys’ Night Out,” but some time Tuesday that modest bit of marketing mischief got pulled from the team’s web site. It hasn’t been the best summer in the nation’s capital for sports marketing endeavors involving fit and tightly uniformed ladies about sports. About two weeks ago the Washington Capitals, on their web site, announced the formation of a “Spirit Squad,” which of course is code for hot hockey honeys shimming and shaking at home games. A branding silhouette similar to that used by the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ television program three decades ago accompanied the announcement. And predictably, all unholy PC hell broke loose on the team’s official message boards and in comments left on the sites of some of the team’s faithful bloggers.

The Kastles, I noticed Wednesday, have their own brand of Spirit Squad. They were dressed for what I call sexy summer spirit. No one in the stands seemed to feint at the sight of them.

Anyway, Wednesday night I expected to see scores of aged senators and congressmen on hand, what with the nation embroiled in an energy crisis, a war, and a ravenous housing market correction, but a rare appearance by a really world famous sexy athlete a short cab ride from Capitol Hill. Ironically, I saw only California congresswoman Jane Harman.

Hockey is on my mind 12 months a year, and it was at Kournikova’s pre-match press conference at the Hyatt hotel hard by the tennis stadium. I pointed out to her that Washington was the home of one Alexander Ovechkin, her countryman, and today the planet’s greatest hockey player. Kournikova of years past has been a spirited supporter of two prominent Russian hockey talents, Pavel Bure and Sergei Fedorov (the latter also a member of the current Capitals). So I wondered: had she followed the exploits of the infectiously enthusiastic and uber-skilled Ovechkin?

Not so much, it turns out.

“I’ve heard his name, but I don’t really follow it that much unless it’s like the Stanley Cup semis or finals, and just from what I read in the newspaper,” she said. “I don’t really know the stats and stuff,” she added with a nervous laugh.

An ominous sign for the rest of the evening, I’d later think.

I had the terrific company of The Sporting News’ Eric McErlain and accomplished sports photographer Allen Clark. Early into our evening it was Clark who shared with me perhaps the most poignant reflection about Kournikova I’d ever heard: “The camera just wants to love her,” he told me.

It’s so true. In her movements up to the press conference dais at the Hyatt, well covered up in a stylish warmup suit, observers could still appreciate her powerfully world famous form, and not from memory or Internet image association, either. It’s a form that seems to further stylize already stylish outfits. Out on the court, the chisel and fitness of her worship-worthy stems evoked in at least three new media members a shared sense of divine genetics on display. She isn’t merely beautiful; she is stunning in a way that only Anna Kournikova can be.

These were very good images to possess as the deluge set in. The match, after a delay of some 45 minutes, had to be moved indoors at the East Potomac Tennis Center at Hains Point, requiring automobile rides for the transition. My new media colleagues and I were without autos, and so we were left Spirit Sport malnourished. But not unfed.

Washingtonians and the city’s tourists are afforded but a week in late March each year with the fragrant splendor of the cherry blossoms in bloom encircling our Tidal Basin. We in Washington this July night were offered a cruelly brief glimpse, of but a sliver of a single night, of a rare flower from Russia. Better to have lusted admired and lost in person than only to have downloaded, I say.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 3:59 am and is filed under Anna Kournikova. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.