Sharapova plans to open Vietnamese tennis center
In a release, Sharapova said she got the idea after an undisclosed trip to Lai Thieu early last year where she said she saw many people playing tennis but couldn’t understand why they were playing without a ball while using mosquito-catching rackets.“They love tennis but they are poor and can’t buy balls,” Sharapova was told by an interpeter.
Later, she sent a letter to the Vietnam Tennis Federation saying that she would build the Sharapova Bangky tennis training center. UPI
Unfortunately, there appears to be a bit more to this story:
Misled by her interpreter, Sharapova took mosquito-catching rackets for tennis rackets, TTO news agency reported.
When travelling in private in southern Vietnam, Sharapova asked the driver to avoid major streets. He chose a country road surrounded by gardens. There, Sharapova saw the locals playing tennis without a ball.Maria was surprised by the absence of balls and asked the interpreter. But the interpreter didn’t explain that she saw not the tennis rackets but special catching rackets against mosquitoes. The answer was that the locals were too poor to afford the balls.
A month later, the Tennis Federation of Vietnam received a letter from Sharapova that spelled out her project for launching a tennis training center there. No response followed and Maria sent her assistant to find out why she had been ignored by Vietnam’s agencies. Kommersant
I don’t see how this story can be true, since I’ve seen those mosquito rackets and it seems hard to mistake them…plus, rackets seem harder to get than tennis balls or a substitute!