Q Toon: Anyone for Tennis?

After drawing two cartoons in a row about marriage equality, I needed to find some other topic -- any other topic -- for this week. Believe you me, it was a tough challenge.

My husband is a big tennis fan; I see enough of it when Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens are on that I know the big names in the sport: Rafael Nadal... Roger Federer... Venus, Serena and Brian Williams... Nocnoc Djokovic... Angus Podgorny...

I see that I've been getting some visits here from readers in Ukraine, so perhaps some of you are familiar with Sergiy Stakhovsky; but here in the states, I doubt there are many who know of the 30-ranked tennis player who beat Roger Federer in the second round of the Wimbledon Championships two years ago. Even fewer of you caught this story:

Professional tennis player Sergiy Stakhovsky has made some inflammatory comments about women's tennis and the lack of gay men on the men's tour. He told xsport.ua, which 9news in Australia translated:
"You see, on the ATP, we have a normal atmosphere," he said. "If there was anything, we'd know about it, because it's a very closed circle. In the backbone of the top 100 there are definitely no gays."
"On the WTA Tour, almost every other player is a lesbian. Can you imagine — half of them. So I for sure won't send my daughter to play tennis."

If you haven't clicked through to read the cartoon, stop right here, because I'm about to trample all over the punch line. Seriously. Read the cartoon before reading one more word. Okay, I assume that everyone still reading this paragraph has read the cartoon and had a good chuckle or wry smile or eye roll. I just wanted to apologize to my non-Yankee readers that I had young Miss Stakhovskova aspiring to play "soccer." I know that what she would rather play is called "football." My print clients, however, are all in the U.S. of A., so I had to use the term that we Yankees call The Beautiful Game. If I had written "football," my Yankee readers wouldn't have caught my meaning.

For that matter, my Yankee readers probably also didn't catch that I misspelled "Ukrainian."

And congratulations, by the way, to the World Champion U.S. Women's National Team!