I went to the Australian Open Tennis in 97 the 1st year that Martina Hingis won the singles. That same year she also won the doubles playing with my favourite player Natasha Zvereva (she was my favourite for mocking Mary Pierce when she was match point down the previous year).
In their 1st round match i was sitting in the crowd watching on an outside court and the whole way through the match the crowd was going ballistic for Hingis "Martina you're a sex god" "We love you" etc, they were even yelling out for their Polish opponents, but not once did they call out to Zvereva. People around me where saying things like "who is Martina playing with?" "Who is that, how do you say her name?" etc; Zvereva at the time was the no. 1 ranked doubles player and is the 3rd most successful of all time. It was annoying me.
At about 6-0 5-1 Zvereva was serving - she served and followed up with a volley winner. The crowd went crazy for Martina, "Well done Martina, go Martina" etc. Now I was pissed, Hingis didn't even touch the ball and they still were ignoring the player that did. Aaaargh. I snapped.
I was sitting in line with the base line that Natasha was serving from, she was bouncing the ball, the crowd was still yelling out for Hingis and i thought that's it so I called out "Go Natasha" of course just as i did this everyone else stopped calling out, so the whole court heard me (i was pretty loud).
What happened next i will never forget.
Natasha stopped bouncing the ball, turned, looked directly at me and said "thankyou" and the crowd laughed.
So, after the match i had a photo with her and she thanked me again.
It goes to show that although athletes are professional and focussed they are still human and are obviously affected by crowd interaction and obviously feel emotion that affects their play.
