In the wake of the French Tennis Federation’s decision not to give Maria Sharapova a wild card into the French Open, a debate arose within the sport about whether denying Sharapova was also further penalising her.
Steve Simon, the chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, maintains that the federation went too far.
“They have an opinion, and they expressed it, and I don’t happen to agree with that opinion,” Simon said of the federation and its president, Bernard Giudicelli, in a telephone interview. “I’m sure their position is because of what she was suspended for, they don’t feel she should be getting any special help, and by the way that they’ve expressed it, to me what they’ve done, in essence, is increase her penalty.”
Sharapova returned last month from a 15-month suspension for a doping violation that had been reduced from a two-year suspension on appeal. She was suspended in 2016 for taking meldonium, a heart medication that was banned on January 1 of that year.But others rejected Simon’s interpretation of the French Open snub, including Nicole Gibbs, an American player and former star at Stanford who made her views clear first through her Twitter account and then in a follow-up interview.
“I don’t believe that withholding a wild card is a ‘penalising’ action,” she wrote in an email. “A wild card is discretionary and not merit-based in nature, so it’s natural for public opinion and morality to creep into the deliberation process. But by criticising the French Open, the WTA is making a pitch for preferential treatment for Maria that would not be made for other players.”
Still, Simon said he felt the French federation had gone beyond its brief.
“I think where we run into trouble,” he said, “is when we sign up for a programme, and we agree to support the programme and support the decisions that come from it, and then when the decisions come forward you decide to put your own spin on that and decide whether that’s enough or appropriate or interpret the decision. Then I think you are crossing the line.”
Nicolas Mahut, a French men’s player currently ranked 48th in singles and fourth in doubles, also contested the WTA’s position. “Excuse me, Monsieur Simon, but Maria Sharapova is neither penalised nor sanctioned by the FFT,” Mahut wrote in French in a Twitter post. “She is simply not invited.”
She is far from Sharapova nongrata elsewhere in France, however. Denis Naegelen, the owner and director of the tournament in Strasbourg, which she won in 2010, was still holding a wild card for Sharapova on Wednesday without much hope of her claiming it. Sharapova retired from her second-round match in Rome on Tuesday night against Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, citing an injured left thigh.
“The wild card is still on the table, but I’ve had no official word from her,” Naegelen said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
“I simply got a message telling me that it was likely she was going to skip the rest of the clay-court season because she did not have the possibility to play at Roland Garros. And that she was going to, first of all, get treatment and prepare for playing on grass when she will have totally recovered.”
Sharapova declined an interview request through her management team, but she did post a fiery statement on her Twitter account. “If this is what it takes to rise up again, then I am in it all the way, every day,” she wrote. “No words, games, or actions will ever stop me from reaching my own dreams. And I have many.”
With no possibility of playing in the French Open, the Wimbledon qualifying tournament beginning June 26 will be Sharapova’s next opportunity to enter a Grand Slam event — unless Wimbledon gives her a main-draw wild card, which seems unlikely.
If healthy, Sharapova will play in the British grass-court event in Birmingham that begins on June 19 after being offered a wild card. Though some players have argued that Sharapova should not be receiving wild cards after her suspension, Gibbs said she did not question it.
“It’s in their best interest to award her a wild card because she is a huge draw for ticket sales; why would they not?” she said. “However, the fact that she was allowed to appear on a draw before her suspension was complete seemed to push the boundaries of the rule book, to say the least.”
Gibbs was referring to Sharapova’s comeback tournament in Stuttgart, Germany.
For now, there is no rule governing the issuance of wild cards to players coming back from doping-related suspensions.
“Our rule book provides for them today,” Simon said. “Maria hasn’t received anything she’s not entitled to. Will that be looked at long term? I’m sure it will. Every rule gets looked at.”
Simon said he did not plan on pushing for a re-examination of the wild-card rule, but would be open to it. So would Naegelen, who finds himself offering a wild card to Sharapova while the most important French clay-court tournament did not.
There have been reports that the French Tennis Federation owns the Strasbourg event, but Naegelen said that a company he owns, Quarterback, purchased it from the federation in 2009. He said the federation does provide an annual subsidy.
“The French federation helps the majority of the pro tournaments in France,” he said. “Their contribution represents close to 6 or 7 percent of our budget, so it’s a significant part, but it’s not the essential part.”
He said that he was free to award wild cards as he saw fit, denying a report that he had received approval from the federation to offer one to Sharapova.
“I had no discussion with the federation about this,” he said.
He said he made the offer to Sharapova because of her drawing power, his belief that she had already “paid for her mistake,” and because of his appreciation of her comportment when she won the Strasbourg tournament in 2010, Naegelen’s first year of ownership.
“The whole week she had the attitude of a great professional,” he said. “Her winning the title changed everything in the way our tournament was perceived. I and the tournament owe a lot to Sharapova.”