Bad apologies came sailing out of this year’s Wimbledon. So many bad apologies, that even leaving out Serena Williams’s apology for her remarks about the Steubenville rape case (because no tennis was involved), we didn’t know how we’d get up to speed. Luckily, we were able to turn to Senior Tennis Correspondent Wendy M. Grossman, on the ground in the UK. Wendy?

The Apology Championships

The write-ups of this year’s Wimbledon tournament have, regrettably, focused on the tennis. Here we bring you a round-up of the real action.

First round

Serena Williams, in response to a question about some back-and-forth reported comments between her and rival Maria Sharapova about each other’s boyfriends that began with an interview with Williams reported in the June 18 issue of Rolling Stone:

“I made a point to reach out to Maria as well because she was inadvertently brought into a situation by assumptions made by the reporters. I personally talked to Maria at the player party, incidentally, and I said, ‘Look, I want to personally apologize to you if you are offended by being brought into my situation, and I want to take this moment to just pour myself and be open and say, Hi, and I’m very sorry for this whole situation.’”

“[B]eing brought into my situation” – someone brought you into it. Maybe me, maybe not me. There’s some justice to this, since the relevant passage of the published interview ran this way:

“There are people who live, breathe and dress tennis. I mean, seriously, give it a rest.” …the conversation [on the phone, with her sister Venus] moves on to a top-five player who is now in love. “She begins every interview with ‘I’m so happy. I’m so lucky’ – it’s so boring,” says Serena…. “She’s still not going to be invited to the cool parties. And, hey, if she wants to be with the guy with a black heart, go for it.” (An educated guess is she’s talking about Sharapova, who is now dating Grigor Dimitrov, one of Serena’s rumored exes.)

In other words, Williams left it perfectly unclear whether she actually meant Sharapova. The three other players she could have meant are Victoria Azarenka (dating the singer and rapper Redfoo), Agnieska Radwanska (love life unknown), and Sara Errani (ditto). But Sharapova is the most likely: their rivalry is the longest, dating back to 2004 when Sharapova, then 17, precociously beat Williams in the Wimbledon final. She hasn’t had much success since – but she out-earns Williams in the endorsement business.

The “if” in the apology is, I think, nearly mitigated by the rest of what Williams said she said. Later, Sharapova said that Williams had apologized but gave no details: “Uhm, you know, honestly, I’ve said everything that I wanted to say about the issue. You know, Wimbledon started. This is my work. This is my job. I’d really appreciate it if we move on.”

Second Round

Sharapova is not known to have apologized for her widely reported response to Williams’s Rolling Stone comments: “If she wants to talk about something personal, maybe she should talk about her relationship and her boyfriend that was married and is getting a divorce and has kids.” Sharapova was presumed to be referring to Williams’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou; their relationship has been the subject of much speculation but no confirmation. Williams declined to discuss her own private life, so we’re left with the tabloid pictures.

Third round

Annabel Croft: “I apologize to anyone who might have taken offense, but it was meant as a harmless piece of banter. Serena has a magnificent bottom that every woman should aspire to.”

Annabel Croft was the pride of British tennis in the 1980s; her ranking topped out at 21 in 1985, and she quit in 1988 at age 21 when she realized she’d achieved everything she was ever going to in the sport. Now a TV commentator, Croft played host at a corporate launch given by the Lawn Tennis Association, the sport’s British governing body, at which she previewed the day’s play. One of the guests, deeply offended, complained widely to the press about comments Croft made about Williams in discussing an upcoming match against Kimiko Date-Krumm. It was reported that Croft called Williams “huge,” said her dresses were “very carefully designed to hide her bulk,” and mistook one of Williams’s tennis dresses for a wedding dress in the changing room.

Here, if it weren’t obvious enough that Croft’s apology was utter nonsense, all you have to do is look at a picture: she is so thin she looks like a bobble-head. If she truly aspired to a “magnificent bottom” of any size, it’s safe to assume she’d look like she ate something once in a while.

Final

John Inverdale: “We poked fun, in a nice way, about how she looks … but Marion Bartoli is an incredible role model.”

Most onlookers thought Bartoli, the utterly unexpected women’s champion, looked ecstatic holding the trophy on what has to have been the best day of her 28-year-old life. Perhaps at a loss to understand Bartoli’s triumph at an event that included Williams (lost fourth round), Sharapova (lost second round), Azarenka (injured first round), and Radwanska (lost semis), Inverdale, a veteran BBC TV and radio commentator, said this to the BBC’s radio listeners after the final ended: “Do you think Bartoli’s dad told her when she was little, ‘You’re never going to be a looker.’? ‘You’ll never be a [Maria] Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight.'”

Inverdale was confused on two fronts. First, on the connection between looking pretty and winning sporting events (a matter taken up with extreme umbrage on Twitter). Second, on the facts: Sharapova is the younger player by two years, so Walter Bartoli, who has dedicated much of his life to his daughter’s career, is unlikely to have said anything at all about her. Inverdale later wrote Bartoli a further (unpublished) letter of apology.

Bartoli’s response was pure class: “I am not blonde, yes. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely.” Then she got all glammed up and went off to the Champion’s Ball to pose with her trophy and men’s champion Andy Murray.

The champion

I say Annabel Croft. Inverdale would win on timing, audience size, and general offensiveness, but it’s fair to say that what he was really trying to get at was that unlike most of today’s Amazon-sized players, Bartoli is short and therefore can’t get any free points on court and has to fight for every game – which is actually a fair point, however ham-fistedly he put it. Croft’s “apology” wins on pure absurdity.