Tennis Pro Cuts Her Own Hair on Court in Bid to Win

Russian tennis player Svetlana Kuznetsova was struggling. Throughout her match against Poland’s Agnieszka Radwańska in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) finals in Singapore on Monday, Kuznetsova’s ponytail kept swinging into her eyes, according to the Guardian. She was losing to her opponent and felt the situation needed to be addressed.

So, in the third set of the round-robin opener, Kuznetsova took drastic measures. She asked for two things: a time-out and a pair of scissors, according to the report. Then she shocked spectators, at-home viewers, and commentators by calmly hacking off half of her own ponytail from her seat on the court.

The bold move was caught live on camera, as commentators speculated. “I can think of two reasons,” one female sportscaster said to her male counterpart. “One, she’s feeling heavy on the court and taking a bit of weight off. Or potentially, it’s just really at an awkward length, where it’s clearly disturbing her.”

The stunt clearly worked. After losing in the second set and trailing behind in the third, according to ESPN, Kuznetsova returned to the court, post-haircut, and proceeded to take down her opponent and win 7-5, 1-6, 7-5.

At a press conference after the game, Kuznetsova finally had a chance to explain her quirky strategy. “Every time I would hit a good shot, it would hit my eye every time, and I had [to] struggle,” she said. “I thought, ‘OK, what’s more important now, my hair, which I can let grow, or the match?’ I thought, ‘OK, I got to go for it right now,’ and that’s it. I was not thinking too much, though. I was just trying to get the best of me. … I don’t even know how much I cut there.”

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Kuznetsova’s peers were shocked (and tickled) by her on-court grooming behavior. Australian tennis player Daria Gavrilova — whom Kuznetsova had defeated in the Kremlin Cup in Moscow on Saturday, qualifying the Russian pro for this very match — asked on Twitter, “Did Sveta just cut her own hair?” and followed up with, “If you want a break, just give yourself a haircut.”

Candidly, Kuznetsova admitted that for a moment, before she got “the eye of the tiger,” she contemplated giving up. “At some point, I was ready to just let it go and lie on the court and let them take me out of here,” she said during the press conference. “But I decided to hang in there.”

Ever the good sport, Kuznetsova posted video of her auto-crop to her Instagram after the match. She captioned it, “Sometimes you gotta do it not by best hairdressers … and not at best time.”

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