As guest editor of tabloid!'s Daily Deuce, Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships wild card Sergei Bubka certainly threw himself into all aspects of the print run on his visit to Gulf News offices on Tuesday. However, he was forced to stand well beyond the baseline when it came to judging the best dressed female tennis player from last week's Tuesday edition.
While the 24-year-old Ukrainian, who lives in Monte Carlo, was happy to pour over the page for, ahem, any typos, he suddenly became more guarded when it came to passing judgment on whom most caught his eye.
"My girlfriend Victoria Azarenka is a tennis player so I have to be careful what I say here," laughed Bubka, the namesake of his famous pole-vaulting USSR and Ukrainian Olympic gold medalist father.
"They all look pretty nice," said Bubka Jr rather diplomatically, "It's nice to see them dressed up in something other than their tennis clothes."
"I know a few of the girls from juniors so it's... [long pause] interesting to see them from a different perspective," said the current world No 342 ranked youngster, who has surprised all with his ATP 500 Series main event debut in Dubai. So far he's overcome Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic in the first round and is set to face France's Richard Gasquet in the second.
‘Set the bar too high'
Having shunned athletics for tennis, because his father "set the bar too high" winning 12 golds at the Olympics, World, European and Indoor Championships, with 35 world records, it was all strawberries and cream for Bubka as he coursed through the rest of the issue.
Knowing his romance with "Vika", the 21-year-old blonde Belarusian world No 9, was now safe from fault, he relaxed when it came to reading about to the players' choices of music from Tuesday's issue.
"I'm listening to a lot of Bruno Mars, 50 Cent featuring Jeremiah and Eminem on my iPod before I step on court at the moment — it helps me relax, stay focused and block out distractions so I can stay concentrated for my game."
Admitting that he probably wasn't a strong candidate for editor given his casual reading habits, he said "I follow celebrity gossip a bit because I like music and movies, so just to read about the actors and singers is interesting while I'm in transit."
Of fashion he said he could do with the advice, "I'm just a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, nothing special. I like the Italian brands and I'm really particular about my choice of sneakers."
Overlooking the cartoons unless it was that of his childhood favourite "what's that cat's name again?" (Garfield) — and ruling the horoscopes out as "truth I'd prefer sometimes not to know," Bubka was left only envious of Novak Djokovic's chance to swim with the dolphins. "I haven't had much time to look around Dubai but that's definitely something I'd like to do, it looks pretty cool."
Worn out from his afternoon as editor and needing all the strength he can muster against Gasquet in the second round, Bubka conceded as every good editor eventually does, "I'll leave it to the professionals, you guys seem to know what you're doing."
