NSFW - Fatback Media

Tennis players Maria Sharapova and Andy Roddick are deflecting rumors that they are a couple. Recently, during a rained out session of the US Open the two were asked to play an “exhibition” match to raise the spirits of disappointed ticket holders. The fact that those two were specifically asked to play on the same court together raised some eyebrows and fueled speculation that they are a couple.

Roddick and Sharapova have been peppered with questions about whether they’re romantically involved since the U.S. Open began last week.

The 19-year-old Sharapova has flatly declined to discuss her personal life in news conferences, adopting the sourpuss expression she flaunts in her latest Nike commercial, in which she strides from her Manhattan hotel to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center as a host of New Yorkers serenade her with, “I Feel Pretty.”

Roddick, 24, has deflected suggestions of a liaison more directly.

“We’re not dating,” he said last week. “I’ve said it a million times already, but you guys refuse to write it. Mmm, you know, we’re friendly. We’re in the same places. I think she’s a great girl. You know, we’ll talk. But that’s about it.” (source)

I never really got into tennis when I was a kid because it seemed like such a country club activity. Just rich white people with perfect teeth prancing around in white shorts with sweaters tied around their necks swatting the air with the cover still on the racket. I wanted to play, but I think you’re more likely to hear “Now batting for the Red Sox, DH Stephen Hawking” than “Now serving on the far court, the dirty poor kid from the Key Largo trailer park, unit 3, whose mother is banging the landlord for smokes and rent”. I’m not saying that tennis is an elitist sport. I’m saying that Maria Sharapova is 6′2″ and she scares me. Scares me sexy.