Brainsqueeze the Nineteenth: Things Russian Players Say

Daniil Medvedev loves chatting up umpires. He mostly has nothing very pleasant to say. But Russian players have always gabbed some of the most memorable (chuckle/cringe) lines on the sidelines of the tennis.

A quiz on 5 Russian unforgettables.

Winner: Udit Joshi
City: Noida

Q1. “Thirty feels no different to yesterday when I was 29, and no different to when I was 24 or 25. Except this is the first year I have been given a cake at Wimbledon!”

A Victoria sponge with buttercream and strawberry jam filling for the ‘Mischa’ or ‘Colonel’s June 25 birthday. Who’s the Russian tennis player?

Ans: Mikhail Youzhny

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Q2. It was a preface to a mea-culpa. But tennis players do hold strong opinions on surfaces they stomp on.

“If I was ever gonna announce my retirement, it would probably not be in this downtown Los Angeles hotel with this fairly ugly carpet.” Which Russian tennis player?

Ans: Maria Sharapova
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Q3. Medvedev hated clay so much that he wickedly once scribbled “Love clay” on camera. But then there was that Russian who trolled grass-blades before trolling got invented. When asked How hard is it to break a racquet on grass?

He said: “You break the court faster than you break the racquet, that’s for sure.” Who’s he?

Ans: Marat Safin

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Q4. The crowd couldn’t stop booing. So our Russian let it rip to his favourite audience – the umpire.

“I think it’s actually easier to enjoy life when you have, when you have no brain. Because then you don’t think, you just scream. No matter if the guy is serving or not, you just scream. And you enjoy life. I wonder what it is. I, I want to see how it is inside because I have no idea.” Who’s he?

Ans: Daniil Medvedev

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Q5. Which Russian player suggested that tennis pros were underpaid in relation to pro-golfers, to which Andre Agassi scalded: “My feelings are that he should take his prize money when he is done here and go buy some perspective”?

Ans: Yevgeny Kafelnikov

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