Tennis Has A New Villain in Patricia The Terrible

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a real bona fide lunatic player in top shelf of professional tennis. Too long. Luckily for us, Patricia Mayr of Austria, currently ranked # 71, appears ready and willing to fulfill that role.

Mayr, who is perhaps best known for making Anne Keothavong cry, is quickly establishing herself as a villain par excellence on the WTA Tour. Playing against Margalita Chaknashvili of Georgia in a first round match in Budapest on Tuesday, Mayr began loudly shouting "come on" after every point won, be it on winner or Chaknashvili error or double fault. At 6-0, 4-4, after Chaknashvili had said "sorry" for a point won on a net cord bounce, Mayr walked up to the net and inexplicably flipped off her opponent.

Mayr's gesture, naturally, was not warmly received by the umpire, crowd, or Chaknashvili, who refused to continue play. The tournament referee was called down to the outer court, where he let Mayr off with a warning.

Mayr went on to beat a clearly rattled Chaknashvili 7-5 in the second to get the win, a victory that was unsurprisingly not punctuated with a handshake.

No further fallout from the match in the way of fines or sanctions have been reported, though Mayr was seen angrily storming out of the WTA office on site.

Karma may have had a hand in Mayr's second round match, which she led 6-0, 2-0 before falling to Swiss Timea Bacsinszky 0-6, 6-3, 6-4. Bacsinszky was finally able to get a read on Mayr's moonballing and establish control of her serve. Nice to see Bacsinszky back from that left knee injury that has kept her out of most all of 2009. She's a real fun player to watch, and hopefully she gets back in the mix soon.

For tennis fans longing to see Mayr’s madness for themselves, get excited because she is likely coming to a town near you! Mayr has played an absurd thirty-five tournaments in the last year, which puts her far into first place for tournaments played in the top 100. The next closest player only has thirty-one. Perhaps it’s the exhaustion that’s driving her to madness?

Whatever the reason for Mayr’s hatred of the world is, I'm happy to have it. In a sport that is becoming increasingly full of cookie cutter shreikers who are only passively aggressive in their on court behavior, Mayr represents an important step towards full on aggression that will eventually lead to straight up brawling and hair-pulling.

I, for one, can't wait.