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Post by Pamela Shriver on Apr 12, 2006 17:24:07 GMT -5
Her "agent" is releasing statements again, and completely leaving out Estoril, which is why I'm thinking she's out. Or Agent Man is just a stupid fuck. Both options are possible.
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 15, 2006 11:28:51 GMT -5
I'm leaning towards the 2nd option.
Why wouldn't she play Estoril. How does she know in late March that she'll be ready to play on May 8th, and not May 1st.
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Post by janie on Apr 16, 2006 20:19:57 GMT -5
Her "agent" is releasing statements again, and completely leaving out Estoril, which is why I'm thinking she's out. Or Agent Man is just a stupid fuck. Both options are possible. Well what were the statements?
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KV
New Member
Posts: 1
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Post by KV on Apr 19, 2006 12:01:20 GMT -5
How about Lena playing Prague, that's last I read. Would be great if Lena returns back to the game. BTW, anybody else who can't get access to Wtaworld?
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 19, 2006 15:20:27 GMT -5
Yes, she's entered Prague.
We'd like her to play the week before that, also.
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Post by Calico on Apr 22, 2006 9:08:43 GMT -5
It's good to know Lena will be back on tour soon. But I wish she was playing Estoril since it's a tournament that means alot to her. Hi Karl (KV) it's nice to see you here.
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Post by Pamela Shriver on Apr 22, 2006 11:18:09 GMT -5
Her "agent" is releasing statements again, and completely leaving out Estoril, which is why I'm thinking she's out. Or Agent Man is just a stupid fuck. Both options are possible. Well what were the statements? "The last year has been just awful for Bovina - continuous injuries have prevented her playing in any tournaments at all", her manager Alexei Nikolaev told the sports agency "All Sport". "From now on, all these problems will remain in the past. Lena is training in Spain, at the famous Sanchez-Casal academy, and has already entered the Prague tournament whjch starts on the 8th of May". Nikolaev added: "She has everything that she needs to start the season, not just in good form, but in excellent form"
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 22, 2006 11:20:24 GMT -5
Let's assume that he's a moron.
So, she'll play Estoril, and look worse than ever.
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Post by janie on Apr 22, 2006 14:27:43 GMT -5
It's strange, though. Why can't anything ever be straightforward with Giant Barbie!
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 22, 2006 14:34:11 GMT -5
To torture me. I deserve it.
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Post by Calico on Apr 23, 2006 12:57:54 GMT -5
Leelee, what problems is Elena's manager talking about when he said Elena's problems will remain in the past? Is he talking about physical problems or personal problems? Poor Elena. I hope she's happy when she starts her comeback to the WTA World. That happiness might show up in her play and effort. Udachi Elena!
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 23, 2006 14:49:18 GMT -5
Who knows. This is the same dolt that said she's playing New Haven, for sure! I just want Elena back. Elena & Anna-Lena - #1 and #2 in 2007.
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Post by Calico on Apr 23, 2006 15:15:50 GMT -5
I would be happy with Bovina being #15 and Groeneveld #16 in 2007. I hope that's possible. Let's just see if Lena can finish 2006 healthy and playing some fine tennis. She still has alot of potential. I remember a match a couple years ago against Capriati in New Haven where Lena looked awesome and I thought she really has a big upside. I hope she still has that big upside. As for Anna-Lena I think she could make a run at the top 10 someday if things break right for her.
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 23, 2006 15:17:04 GMT -5
No. #1 and #2.
And I still watch that Caprifati 2003 New Haven match, occasionally. Was a really, really good match... remains one of the best quality women's matches I've ever seen.
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Post by Pamela Shriver on Apr 23, 2006 17:41:03 GMT -5
All the papers around here ran the headline "RALLY CAP!!!!" the next day.
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 23, 2006 17:44:29 GMT -5
Memories... But, they will be relived again! Next time, at a slam!
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Post by Calico on Apr 24, 2006 18:53:51 GMT -5
Let's hope Elena has slam success this year. But what would constitute slam success for Bovina coming off a long layoff? I think making it to the second week would be a great slam success for Elena this year.
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Post by Pamela Shriver on Apr 24, 2006 19:48:12 GMT -5
That's always been grand slam success for Beebee.
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Post by janie on Apr 25, 2006 18:52:56 GMT -5
Sad news from wtaworld's Estoril forum, posted today by in-the-know Portuguese poster Corswandt: "... Bovina's name isn't on the latest qualifying list sent by the WTA."So the manager was more on top of things than we wanted to think. But the way he spoke about Prague, I think there's a good chance she'll start her season there.
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Post by Brinyi on Apr 25, 2006 19:16:15 GMT -5
Sure, yeah, right.
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 25, 2006 21:43:32 GMT -5
Maybe she's in the main draw, and not in qualies.
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Post by janie on Apr 26, 2006 11:47:01 GMT -5
Had not seen this article from the NY Daily News before; it's dated 4/15:
'The coach from hell'
By WAYNE COFFEY DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
He was born in Yonkers and raised on the streets and came to be known as Joey G, a playful nickname that seems quite ill-fitting given his current circumstances. There are a lot of people looking for Joey G — aka Joe Giuliano — these days. Some are friends who are worried about him. Some are alleged victims who are repulsed by him. Some are investigators for the Carlsbad (Calif.) Police Department who are eager to talk to him.
Joe Giuliano is a tennis coach, or at least he used to be, before he disappeared some five months ago, before the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) banned him for life amid charges of sexual indiscretions, making him the first person in the sport to be permanently suspended. And the Tour does mean permanently.
The WTA has even barred Giuliano from buying a ticket to a Tour event; his face was posted at entry points and ticket booths at the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, S.C., last week.
"The decision is final. It is not appealable," says WTA chairman, Larry Scott who would not disclose specifics about Giuliano's transgressions, except to say that they stem from an incident last summer in Carlsbad involving Evgenia Linetskaya, a Russian player who was then 18. An ongoing criminal investigation is exploring "possible sexual assault" charges against Giuliano, says Delphine Smith, manager of records for the Carlsbad police.
Giuliano has also been linked to sexual misconduct by two American players on the Tour: 20-year-old Ashley Harkleroad and 28-year-old Tara Snyder.
There has long been an aura of mystery around Giuliano, a smart-alecky character in his mid-40s, a man with rough-edged charm who smoked and partied and seemed to have more in common with Tony Soprano's crew than the country-club set the sport traces as its roots. Friends say he has never had a home of his own and was effectively a tennis nomad, living out of suitcases and hotel rooms and changing cell phones the way most people change socks.
Now there is much more than mystery surrounding Giuliano, who has friends in high places and a gift for teaching the game, and always seemed to have a new player under his tutelage — a door that stopped revolving with the allegations of misconduct.
"He is a sexual predator, a wolf in sheep's clothing," says Snyder, a WTA veteran who says she was accosted in a bathroom by Giuliano during their 12-week affiliation in the spring and summer of 2001. "He is the coach from hell and I'd like to send him back where he came from."
Harkleroad worked with Giuliano for one tournament — the Family Circle Cup — two years ago. She fired him after one lost match, and though she declined to be interviewed, a source close to her says she wound up fleeing her hotel in the middle of the night after Giuliano showed up at the door of her room with a six-pack, and forced his way in. "He put his hands on her," the source says, adding that when Harkleroad told him to leave, Giuliano returned to his room next door (he frequently booked rooms adjacent to his players', Snyder says) and began banging on the wall.
Harkleroad's father, Danny, reported the incident to WTA chairman Scott, Nike and officials at IMG — an agency with which Giuliano has long been closely allied. Harkleroad did not want to comment for this story, though a person close to the family says, "Joe's not all bad. He's a good coach who loves the game. He just seems to have lost it."
Former player Brad Gilbert, now an ESPN commentator and a former coach of Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick, is a longtime friend of Giuliano's. "There are always two sides to every story, (but) if these things are true and I had known them a long time ago, he wouldn't have been my friend anymore," Gilbert says. "If all this stuff is true, there's not much you can say. It's pretty bad stuff."
By all accounts, Giuliano had a hard life long before he knew a forehand from a backhand. He has told friends about losing his father as a young boy, and being abandoned by his mother. He moved from Yonkers to Phoenix and grew up pretty much on his own, learning to play tennis at public parks, ultimately playing his way onto the team at the University of Tennessee. He had a brief run as a pro player, but had much more success off the court, befriending the late Vitas Gerulaitis and John McEnroe along the way, not to mention Gilbert and Agassi, too. He was a regular at Nick Bollettieri's academy in Florida, and never seemed to enjoy himself more than when he was hanging with the biggest names in the sport.
"He wanted to be a big-time guy," says one longtime friend. "He wanted to be a player in the tennis world." Coaching, he decided, was the way to get there.
Giuliano has worked with Vince Spadea on the men's side, and a succession of players — Mary Pierce, Marlene Weingartner and Mirjana Lucic — on the women's. In 2002, he helped Elena Bovina, a 19-year-old Russian, make the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, before the relationship unraveled. Dennis Polyakov, a Russian businessman and Bovina's former agent, says the only issue he was aware of involving Bovina was the player and her parents being upset that Giuliano was unreliable and would show up for practice hung over at times. Bovina declined comment.
"Joe always seemed to have trouble keeping a gig," says Patrick McEnroe, a friend who has known Giuliano for almost two decades. "Whether this was part of the reason why, I don't know, but it certainly makes you wonder."
Part-owner of the New York Sportimes, the team Giuliano coached to the World Team Tennis championship last fall, McEnroe was shocked when he heard of the ban. "We always knew Joe was a free spirit, a guy who was out there, but I never knew anything about this."
Snyder, of Irving, Tex., didn't know anything about it either, until she began working with Giuliano in April 2001. "It starts out pretty subtle, little things: ‘You need to stretch out, let me give you a massage,'" says Snyder of Giuliano's approach. He would comment on how good her legs looked, she says, and once told her that he'd seen Lucic with her shirt off. Snyder, once ranked as high as No. 33 in the world, thought it was creepy, but ignored her instincts. The problems started in earnest when they went to Paris for the French Open. Giuliano switched their hotel, and moved into the next room. He blocked calls at the front desk from her boyfriend, pro Brent Haygarth, and her parents, and made a move on her in the hotel lobby rest room, asking if she was alone, then barging in, according to Snyder, pushing her up against the sink. He bought her an expensive leather jacket for her birthday, and showed up at her door in a suit and tie ready to take her out, only to learn she was going out with Haygarth.
Snyder says she fired Giuliano and went home. In the weeks before Wimbledon, Snyder says she got eight or 10 calls a day from Giuliano, begging her to take him back. She thought Giuliano was a good coach on the court, and decided to give him another chance. Though he made no overt moves on her at Wimbledon, Snyder says Giuliano was still trying to get in the way of her relationship with Haygarth, and would follow her and Haygarth as they walked down the street, scurrying away if they caught a glimpse of him. She says she was so fed up she voided an $8,000 check she'd written him.
"He'a little weasel, a rat boy, and I hope not to see him again in this lifetime," says Snyder, who fired Giuliano for good after one half-hearted match at Wimbledon. "Mentally I was so fried at that point it was pretty much a tank job just to get it done with." Snyder has struggled in the wake of knee surgery, and has seen her ranking plummet to No. 305. Her mother, Pat Snyder, traces much of the decline to Giuliano.
"Tara used to be known as a player who played with a lot of heart. After Joey, she didn't play with heart, but anger. She was spinning wheels in every direction."
Snyder says she warned other players about Giuliano, but did not tell the Tour, which she believes has been remiss in not counseling young players about the possible perils of hiring a coach with an agenda off the court.
"You have a lot of sharks out there, and their job is to find naïve young girls and feed them a line about how they can take you to the top 20," Snyder says. "If there are no background checks on these coaches and the Tour lets them in, this definitely won't be the last time this happens."
Scott says the Tour's code of conduct is "the best in class," and says wide-ranking orientation seminars effectively cover a smorgasboard of potential perils facing players.
"Nothing is more important to us than issues involving the health and safety of our players," Scott says.
Why didn't Snyder report Giuliano's transgressions to the WTA? "She felt stupid and naïve for letting it happen," Pat Snyder says. "She didn't want to say anything."
Giuliano's lifetime ban was handed down on Nov. 14, at a hearing before the WTA board of directors in Los Angeles. He was found guilty of violating Section 14, part IV, of the WTA code of conduct, which bars coaches from "non-consensual sexual contact."
The hearing was held three months after the Tour stop in San Diego -— the Acura Classic — last August, when Linetskaya was briefly hospitalized and Simon Linetskiy, the player's father, was arrested by Carlsbad, Calif. police on suspicion of battery of his daughter (the criminal case was later dropped, but the Tour barred Linetskiy from the Tour for two years because of the incident). About a week later, the police began probing the sexual assault allegations against Giuliano.
Giuliano was served with papers on multiple occasions informing him of the hearing, Scott says, but he didn't attend, and was not represented by counsel. Giuliano told a friend he was going to hire an attorney, but apparently has not done so.
"I couldn't get a straight answer out of him about why he didn't defend himself," a close friend of Giuliano's says.
Adds Brad Gilbert: "Because he didn't answer to the charges, it's pretty hard to refute them."
Patrick McEnroe says Giuliano was in fine spirits the last time they spoke, six months ago, not long after the Sportimes' WTT triumph. Giuliano was headed to South Africa to work with a couple of junior players —a job he subsequently lost after the ban came down. His M.O. has long been to disappear for awhile, then show up at a tournament with a new player, but even good friends who are accustomed to Giuliano's wandering ways are concerned about how long he's been underground.
Claude Okin is the principal owner of the Sportimes, and another person close to Giuliano. "I don't think he's a molester, a rapist or a sexual deviant," Okin says. "That's my gut feeling. I could be wrong; the next-door neighbors never know anything. But I know him pretty well and I've never seen him behave in an ugly way, or use his coaching position to get sex."
More than a few of Giuliano's friends and colleagues describe him as a lonely man who has spent too many years on the road, and a person with profound insecurities that he concealed behind brashness. He would vehemently insist he was 5-10, one friend says, even though he was an inch or two shorter. "Maybe's he's got some crazed part of him that none of us ever knew about, and all of a sudden it came out," another friend says.
With no home, no wife or children, no apparent life beyond tennis, the coach people knew as Joey G was his sport's most self-styled itinerant. As allegations and investigations hover around him and a lifetime ban has locked him out of the sport he lived to be on the inside of, Joe Giuliano is out there somewhere, maybe more alone than ever, maybe looking for a way to keep the rally going, no matter how lost the point might seem.
"This is a guy who always had a next move, a next player, a next tournament, a next hotel," Okin says. "But I don't think he had a next move for what to do after tennis, and that to me is the sad part."
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Post by Pamela Shriver on Apr 26, 2006 14:33:43 GMT -5
"Bovina declined comment."
I could just see her looking at the reporter with that dazed look, then glaring at him, and walking away.
Good to know she wasn't raped, though.
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Post by janie on Apr 26, 2006 18:52:04 GMT -5
I don't think we'll ever know what happened. Just because this former agent doesn't know of anything happening between JG and EB doesn't mean nothing happened. I seriously doubt she'd confide in him.
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Post by shenaynay on Apr 26, 2006 19:00:11 GMT -5
Janie is correct. In many cases like that, the female won't say anything.
I think Tara's story is a good depiction of what happened with Elena... since, they also split and reunited at least 2 times.
And if he tried naughty stuff on No-Nose Snyder... why wouldn't he with Giant Barbie...
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Post by shenaynay on May 1, 2006 8:40:12 GMT -5
I fully expected to be up early in the morning, following our scores this week.
I'm very displeased.
I hope Ms. Hingis enters Prague so she can laugh at you. Like what happened in Philly. Thanks.
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Post by janie on May 1, 2006 19:37:01 GMT -5
I was at a Giant Barbie vs Hingie match in Philly a few years ago. GB was very young (I guess MH was, too, but she was a big shot and GB was virtually unknown). GB started off looking pretty strong, overpowering MH, but once MH figured out her game, which took only about 2 games, it was all over for GB. I remember one time she went to change racquets and it took her a huge amount of time -- even the insanely polite Villanova crowd was starting to murmur! <gasp> GB's own little version of the "Bathroom Break". :-D
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Post by shenaynay on May 1, 2006 20:52:48 GMT -5
That was 2000. Ms. Hingis wasn't really young then. And not surprising that Tina whooped her. GB was very raw, and wild.
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Post by Calico on May 2, 2006 18:58:58 GMT -5
Leave it to Janie to invoke Philadelphia on us. But back in 2000 I thought Elena would be a top 10 player someday. But other things got in the way such as injuries. Sadly Elena might be the most injured Russina ever on the WTA Tour. P.S. - Did anyone here at Becca's board wish Becca a happy birthday on April 30, 2006? I looked here the other day and didn't find anything about her birthday. Happy birthday Becca!
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Post by janie on May 2, 2006 19:06:25 GMT -5
Leena mentioned Philly first. Did not know Becca had a b'day! Delayed happy b'day to you, Becca! Hope you have a stellar year.
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