Do they watch tennis?

[bb47]

It 's second year in a row when a US Open official embarrases himself at the ceremony by not be able to pronounce the name of a US Open Champion. Last year it was some " Janet" or whatever instead of Justine, now it's "Kuznetsssspffff" . Where these guys come from?

[pound cat]

Yes, mispronouncing names of people foreign to American soil are ceasing to be funny, (seeing as these names can be as American as this guy is) and this was a massive display of ignorance from whatever his name is. At least at the end, Pam said Svetlana's name loud and clear...and I did like the CBS opening scene where there was an attempt at writing the commentator's name in Cyrillics and Russian music was playing in the background. There is some hope for the broading of minds.

[bb47]

Yeah, and they may even figure out if it's KuznEtsova ( as most Americans say) or KuznetsOva ( as most English commentators say. And indeed Russians as well).

[Fee]

That's Alan Schwartz, schmuck President of the USTA. The USTA is one huge farce of an organization, as noted many times in Jon Wortheim's column. They have boatloads of money, mostly from the US Open, and they use it to pay themselves hideously inflated salaries, have annual meetings in Puerto Rico, and do almost nothing for tennis. I probably won't renew my membership next year, I've had almost no benefit from it except for tennis magazine and I can just subscribe to that directly. Why would the head of a tennis organization need to learn to pronounce the name of a top ten tennis player? How embarrassing.

[Ronaldo]

Alan Schmuck best hope Paradorn Srichaphan never wins the US Open. Alan was too busy checking out Hrbaty, eh?