This last July, on a searingly hot day, as the tennis player Andy Murray closed in on a historic sporting achievement — to be the first British man to win a Wimbledon singles title since Fred Perry in 1936 — the BBC cameras kept shifting their gaze from one key character to another as the match entered what would be its final game. The first was, of course, Mr. Murray, a tortured expression on his face as one match point after another eluded him. The other was Novak Djokovic, grimly digging in as he tried to reclaim the title he had won two years earlier. The third, however, was not on the court at all but in the stands: a striking young woman in a green lace dress captured by the cameras alternately cheering, grimacing and then covering her eyes when the spectacle on Center Court became too nerve-racking to watch. That woman was Kim Sears, the longtime girlfriend of Mr. Murray. Her much-chronicled romance with the Scot has made Ms. Sears, an artist whose specialty is animal portraiture, as famous in Britain as any actress, model or member of the royal family. She is, in fact, part of a group of women who have become increasingly well known as the WAGs — the Wives and Girlfriends of world-famous athletes, a term that was first coined by the British press to describe the companions of that country’s soccer team (see: Victoria Beckham) and that has now gone both global and multisport. Many of the tennis WAGs will be seen at this year’s U.S. Open in New York, scheduled to be played through Sept. 9, with their moods, their facial expressions and even their outfits exhaustively chronicled by members of both the sports and fashion media. For instance, within 12 hours of Mr. Murray’s winning his late-night, first-round match on Wednesday, photos of Ms. Sears sitting in the stands and clutching what was identified as her “Ted Baker Baillie bag” (price tag: $560) were being e-mailed to fashion editors by the public-relations team at Ted Baker. If you’re watching the tennis on television this week, don’t be surprised if the cameras keep searching the stands for an up-close look of Jelena Ristic, Mr. Djokovic’s girlfriend (who appears in the September issue of Vogue in a one-page feature showing her in an Oscar de la Renta gown, among other designs, and identifying her as that month’s “It Girl”); Maria Francisca Perello, the longtime girlfriend of Rafael Nadal; the actress Sara Foster, the American fiancée of the German player Tommy Haas; Ester Satorova, the model who dates her fellow Czech Tomas Berdych; Bec Hewitt, the former Australian soap-opera star and the wife of Lleyton Hewitt; and, of course, the ubiquitous Mirka Federer, the wife of the 17-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer and a former player on the women’s circuit. Ms. Federer has become so recognizable to even the average fan that strangers regularly approach her on the street. “I’ve been with her many times when people ask for pictures and this and that,” Ms. Foster said. “She says, ‘Listen, I’m not the public figure here.’ ” Much fuss has been made over the attention Ms. Sears got at Wimbledon. Citing Google Analytics showing that she garnered three times as many Google searches as Marion Bartoli, the women’s champion, an editor at The Huffington Post wrote, “It saddens me to think that a bouncy blow dry and mint green dress has attracted more attention than the world-class performance by an established athlete.” Tennis players are not the only famous athletes whose dating lives have been well chronicled or whose girlfriends have become famous in their own right. The New York Yankee Derek Jeter had a longtime relationship with the actress Minka Kelly (and his teammate Alex Rodriguez a shorter one with Cameron Diaz). The Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander dated the model Kate Upton, the Los Angeles Dodger Matt Kemp was in a nearly yearlong relationship with Rihanna, while the football players Jay Cutler and Mark Sanchez dated the TV stars Kristin Cavallari and Jamie-Lynn Sigler, respectively, and Tom Brady is married to the supermodel Gisele Bündchen. But there is something about tennis that may explain why fans harbor a certain fascination with the romantic companions of their favorite players. As opposed to other sports, like football, where there are multiple athletes in helmets on the field, or even golf, where shots of the players are often from a distance — although the public certainly fixates on these athletes’ love lives, too (see: Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn) — in tennis you watch up-close footage of one player, locked in combat against another, wearing relatively little clothing and grunting and sweating for an extended period of time. “I think there is a general feeling of intimacy that comes with watching tennis,” said Gary Belsky, a columnist for Time.com and a former editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine. “And I think with feelings of intimacy come an interest in the intimate lives of people.” Perhaps for these reasons the public has always goggled at the relationships of tennis players, whether it was Andre Agassi and Brooke Shields, and later, Steffi Graf; John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal; Pete Sampras and Bridgette Wilson; or Andy Roddick and Brooklyn Decker. But there are reasons to suggest that the current group of wives and girlfriends is getting more attention than the predecessors. One factor is social media. The rise of Twitter and blogs has made the public expect much more information from its celebrities. “I do think the intensity about wanting to know about somebody has naturally grown out of those new ways of communication,” said Kelly Wolf, senior director of personalities and properties for Octagon’s tennis division who has represented players like Michael Chang, Todd Martin, Martina Hingis and Mr. Hewitt. That means that the press must do a thorough job of not only constantly providing more photos and details about them but also finding new celebrities (like the wives and girlfriends) to feature. As Mr. Belsky, the Time.com columnist, noted, “As people, without even knowing it, demand more and more fixes of their celebrity drug, there is more of a demand to create and manufacture more celebrities.”
Ver Mas en: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/fashion/singles-become-doubles.html?hp
0 Comentarios