Staff’s Favorites of “Alix’s World”

Written by: Staff on 15th February 2011

Staff’s Favorites of “Alix’s World” |

Australia – January 15, 2011

“And finally, and still on the subject of clothes, Maria Sharapova has a new dress for the Oz Open. It is basically grey with an orange bit over her right… well, across the right hand side of her…. oh, what the hell – she has one orange boob and one grey one.

Now, this fashion statement vexed the good people of the Australian Open website. It vexed them terribly. Oz is not a land where political correctness carries much weight but, even so, the lads on the website tried their best. How to describe the dress? What colour was that orange bit? And where, exactly, was it? Someone suggested that the colour might be described as cantaloupe until someone else noticed that that that would mean Queen Shazza had one melon-coloured melon and one grey one. Things were not going well.”

“Then again, if the clothes designers insist on wrapping their female stars in as little as possible and pointing out their pointy bits with splashes of colour, they cannot be upset when the boys of the world get over-excited. So, for the record: at this year’s Australian Open, Shazza will be wearing a grey frock with one of her Nike norks highlighted in orange. You read it here first folks.”

OZ Open – January 17, 2011

“So what was it, exactly, that Venus was wearing as she sashayed past Sara Errani 6-3, 6-2 and into the second round? Well, judging by the amount of time she spent trying to pull her micro-mini dress down in order to cover her embarrassment, the answer was “not nearly enough”.”

“There was an awful lot of Venus on show and the limited amounts of blue and silver Lycra she had brought with her were not quite up to the job of maintaining a proper level of decency, decorum and dignity. After all, how can a girl be expected to win a grand slam title when her hemline is doing little more than keeping her throat warm? That same girl could catch her death of cold in the unseasonal chill of Melbourne.”

“A year ago in Australia, Venus was headline news on both the front and back pages of every newspaper as she wore her invisible knickers for the first time. It was a heck of a party trick and, riding the wave of media interest, she went all the way to the quarter finals. Coming back this year, she tried to tease and tempt the press by promising to show “more skin” but, when it came to the crunch, the dress was no more than short while the knickers were voluminous and very obvious. And as the male contingent in the crowd grumbled and looked disappointed, the world No.5 put on a more than decent display to oust Errani.”

“It really was an ‘Illusion’ dress,” she explained, the illusion when I wear the nude shorts under. But at the last minute I decided not to. I just decided to wear the black ones. It’s just about focusing on the dress and not anything else. I mean, I had black shorts under. But normally like it’s all about the dress because it has a mesh and a satin kind of material. Of course, it’s all sports gear, and it’s all about that zipper, too. A lot of the focus of the dress is the zipper. So, of course, always I have fun designing my dresses”.”

Lockergate – January 20, 2011

“This year, Jamie has teamed up with Xavier Malisse – we at 10sballs.com are allowed to call him X on account of him being an old friend of the site – and they began their Open doubles campaign with a bang, beating the No.9 seeds Wesley Moodie and Dick Norman 6-4, 6-0. But anyone following Judy on Twitter would have known that her eldest son was in devastating form at the moment, so much so that he splattered a sparrow in practise. And mum was on hand to tell her 1,800 followers all about it. “Jamie’s serve bigger than he thought. Just killed a bird (feathered variety) out on court 17: (“ She has now officially dubbed him Jamie “Sparrow Slayer” Murray. That’s what happens when your mum turns up to your place of work armed with a Blackberry.”

“Wildlife has a rough time of it at grand slams. Michael Llodra vaporised a bird here during a match once, thwacking the poor little flapper with a forehand in a doubles match against Arnaud Clement and Julien Boutter. But the deadliest assassin was Jana Novotna. There she was playing dubs with Arantxa Sanchez on an outside court at Wimbledon when she put up a monumentally high lob, as only she could. As the four women scuttled about waiting for the ball to drop (as it were) a big, fat pigeon fell to earth. Jana’s lob had smacked it, broken its neck and killed it and there it lay, an ex-pigeon, on the manicured turf. Wimbledon, being Wimbledon, suspended play until someone could work out whose point it was, whether they ought to play a let instead or whether the pigeon was merely pining for the fjords.”

Changing of the Guard – January 27, 2011

“It has to be said, we at 10sballs.com are not having the best of Australian Opens. There are three of us here and two of us have been felled by the bug that is flying around the press bunker. The bug is evil, we are crook and suddenly the fit young things leaping about in shorts and t-shirts want to make you spit.”

“But as yours truly lay on her bed of pain, staring at the ceiling and pondering the great questions in life – why does toast always land jammy side down?”

“Blimey, it’s funny what conclusions you can draw when you are lying in your pit between matches. And should my mother be reading this: fear not – I will live thanks to frequent applications of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and over-the-counter drugs. To paraphrase the great Bob Dylan: It’s all right, ma; I’m only sneezing.”