Larry Brown Sports

Serena Williams made some controversial remarks in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine when discussing the Steubenville High School (Ohio) rape case that gained national attention last year. In March, high school football players Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays were convicted of raping a 16-year-old West Virginia girl last summer who was incapacitated by alcohol.

Richmond, who was found guilty of using his fingers to penetrate the victim while she was unconscious, was sentenced to the minimum one year in a juvenile detention facility. Mays was given the same sentence but an additional year of detainment after he was charged with disseminating pornographic pictures of her. In her Rolling Stone interview, Williams wondered if the punishment was fair.

“Do you think it was fair, what they got?” Serenas asked. “They did something stupid, but I don’t know. I’m not blaming the girl, but if you’re a 16-year-old and you’re drunk like that, your parents should teach you: Don’t take drinks from other people. She’s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember?

“It could have been much worse. She’s lucky. Obviously, I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different.”

Williams probably should have kept those comments to herself. Should the girl have been drinking in excess at age 16? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean anyone deserves to be sexually assaulted and publicly humiliated through social media. Coming from a powerful figure in women’s sports, Serena’s comments are even more disturbing as someone who serves as a role model to young women.

Richmond and Mays received the minimum sentence for their heinous acts. What they did could haunt the victim for the rest of her life. Williams is entitled to her opinion, but implying publicly that the girl may have been even partially at fault is incredibly inappropriate.

Maria Sharapova has won four grand slams in her career. Her first was in 2004, and her latest came last year at the French Open to give her the career grand slam. What’s somewhat shocking is that since beating Serena Williams at the finals of Wimbledon in 2004, Sharapova has gone 1-12 head-to-head against Williams. Yes, Sharapova will bring a 12-match losing streak against Serena into their final at the French Open on Saturday at Roland Garros.

Sharapova admitted that her losing streak to Williams bothers her.

“I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t bother me,” said Sharapova after beating Victoria Azarenka, per BBC. “I don’t think that it would be a pretty competitive statement if I said it didn’t. I would love to change that around.

“Obviously whatever I did in the past hasn’t worked, so I’ll have to try to do something different and hopefully it will.”

Williams, meanwhile, has won 30 matches in a row and trashed Sara Errani in 46 minutes in the semifinals to advance to the finals. Is she due for a loss finally? Maybe, but I don’t think that’s happening on Saturday. Serena owns Sharapova. But Sharapova does not seem to be too uptight entering the match. She tweeted a picture of herself relaxing at the park the day before.

Getting ready for the final, and enjoying the warmest day in #Paris so far. #rolandgarros twitter.com/MariaSharapova…

— Maria Sharapova (@MariaSharapova) June 7, 2013

Did I also mention that Sharapova has only won one set against Serena in their last 11 matches? Maybe that’s why she’s not sweating the day before the final.

Photo: Twitter/Maria Sharapova

Mikhail Youzhny did not enjoy his day at the French Open on Sunday. The 30-year-old Russian was dominated by Tommy Haas in the fourth round 6-1, 6-1, 6-3. The match took only 90 minutes.

After Youzhny fell behind 3-0 in the second set, he decided to take out his frustrations on the racket. He slowly walked over to the bench and smashed it nine times, making sure there was no possible chance he would ever be able to use it again.

This is the second straight year Youzhny has been disappointed with his showing at the French Open. Last year, he apologized to the fans by writing this message in the clay. The only positive that can be taken from all this is that Youzhny smashed his racket on the bench. The last time we saw him have a meltdown he was left bleeding pretty badly from the head.

Maria Sharapova was put in place over Twitter by a fellow tennis player’s girlfriend for her lack of knowledge of male tennis players.

Sharapova tweeted to note that she had no clue who two top-30 men’s tennis players were (was she just joking?).

I think I need to watch more #rolandgarros tennis. Yesterday, had no clue who Paire was, today Chardy?I need to step up my tennis knowledge!

— Maria Sharapova (@MariaSharapova) May 31, 2013

Paire is French tennis player Benoit Paire, who entered the French Open ranked 26th in the world in men’s singles and seeded 24th for the tournament. Paire beat Lukasz Kubot in straight sets in the second round before losing to Kei Nishikori in the third round.

Chardy is another French tennis player, Jeremy Chardy, who is ranked No. 27 in the world in men’s singles and entered the French Open seeded 25th. He beat Roberto Bautista Agut in the second round in straight sets and then lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in straight sets in the third round.

After Sharapova tweeted that she was unfamiliar with both players, none other than Chardy’s girlfriend, Alize Lim, came through with an epic tweet. Here’s what Lim, a female tennis player, tweeted back to Sharapova in response:

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Sports will never be the same. If you thought K-Zones and instant replay put a lot of pressure on officials, try sitting there while a tennis player whips out his iPhone and snaps a photo of a controversial call in the middle of a tennis match. Sergiy Stakhovsky did exactly that during his French Open loss to Richard Gasquet on Monday.

Stakhovsky hit a shot that he believed was in but the umpire called it out. When he and Gasquet changed sides, Stakhovsky grabbed his iPhone and snapped a photo of the spot where he thought the ball landed. He later tweeted it out to his nearly 10,000 followers.

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Viktor Troicki played a pretty forgettable match against Ernests Gulbis in the second round of the Italian Open on Wednesday, but he did have a pretty memorable meltdown.

Troicki was down a set and serving to start out the second set down 30-40. Facing a break point, Troicki hit a crosscourt backhand that went deep and appeared to clip the line. The chair umpire called it out, giving Gulbis the break to start the set. It also led to a complete unraveling from Troicki, who went off the hinges.

Troicki immediately complained about the call, leading to him and the umpire investigating the mark the ball left on the clay court. Troicki pointed out that there was no space between the mark the ball left on the court and the baseline, while the umpire refused to change his call.

“You don’t want to correct yourself. You’re wrong,” Troicki kept repeating while making a huge scene.

“From space you can see it’s there,” he said, drawing plenty of laughter.

“You are 100 percent wrong. I wouldn’t make a show out of this,” he continued.

Then around the 2:45 mark, takes the cameramen and has them come out to film a zoomed-in shot of the ball. The camera guys seemed to be loving it, too.

With all respect to Troicki, it looks like he was right in his argument. Check out where the ball landed:

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Tomas Berdych is carving out a nice career on the tennis courts, and he’s doing pretty well off of it, too.

The 27-year-old is ranked No. 6 in the world in men’s singles. His girlfriend, Ester Satorova, might be even higher in the model rankings.

Berdych and Satorova are both from the Czech Republic and have been dating since at least late 2011. Satorova received some attention last year during the US Open, but it wasn’t until I saw Berdych playing in the BNL d’Italia that I learned of Satorova, who was watching him play (seen above). Satorova also watched her boyfriend play at the Madrid Open last week.

Let’s do the rundown on both of them.

Berdych has won eight singles titles in his career, though he has not won a grand slam. His best finish at a grand slam was when he was a runner up at Wimbledon in 2010. He has reached the semis at the French and US Open, and he has made the quarters of the Australian three years in a row. Prior to dating Satorova, he was in a long-term relationship with tennis player Lucie Safarova (don’t be confused by the similar name).

According to her modeling profile, Satorova is 5-foot-9, was born in 1992, and her measurements are 33-23-35. She is repped by agencies in three different countries including Spain, Italy and Malaysia. She has appeared on the cover of at least two different magazines.

Satorova has accompanied Berdych to many tennis functions over the past few years and frequently travels to watch him play. Below are many more pictures of them over the past year and a half.

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