Roland Garros 2009

Another loud young lady

by Paul Myers

Article published on the 2009-05-30 Latest update 2009-06-05 14:41 TU

Michelle Larcher de Brito during her match against Aravane Rezai
(Credit: Reuters)

Hey ho! We’ve got ourselves a controversy, and it involves none other than the so-called new Maria Sharapova, the 16 year old Portuguese player Michelle Larcher de Brito, as Paul Myers explores the latest Roland Garros brouhaha (bien sûr!).

De Brito has been compared with the Russian former world number one for her bludgeoning strokes and fighting spirit. This morning de Brito will be waking up beaming at the fact that she’s entered the top 100 for the first time on the back of her performances here at Roland Garros.

But she’ll also be sipping her morning energy juices with the rustling of unfavourable notices about her on court grunting à la Sharapova. Her third round opponent on Friday, Aravane Rezai, took unkindly to Ms de Brito’s decibels.

During the match the Frenchwoman asked the umpire to do something about it. The din continued and the spectators decided to climb on the back of the youngster. She eventually cracked amid the cacophony of whistles, jeers and boos and she went down 7-6 6-2.

Afterwards de Brito said Rezai had only started complaining about the sounds when she suspected her opponent was beginning to play better. While Rezai had a go at the umpire for not doing his job, she was effusive about de Brito's talent. But she added she was still a whippersnapper and still had a few things to learn about life on the tour.

 There's an irony in this as readers of the Roland Garros blog will know. When I spoke to her at the start of the week, one of the things de Brito was quite vocal about was the fact that the bigwigs of the women's tour have brought in rules stipulating that under 18s can only play in 12 tournaments a year.

Since the Lisbon larynx is still in her mid teens, that won’t be any time soon. "Handbags" is how professional footballers in Britain describe on field scuffles. And while this didn't quite turn into fisticuffs, you felt in the post match interviews that we were on our way to "tennis racquets at dawn".

It’s a shame that the match was overshadowed by a noisy neighbour dispute. There were lots of positives emerging from it. Rezai is into the last 16 in her home tournament for the first time in five visits and we have surely witnessed the arrival of one of the future stars of the women’s game.

Just get your earplugs ready when de Brito comes up against Sharapova.

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