Okay, maybe I’m soft. Maybe I (stupidly) believe that some drugs are not the same as others, and shouldn’t be treated with as much contempt in sports. And yes, I feel it’s unfair when an athlete pays the full price for a mistake she made because she wasn’t paying attention, rather than trying to break the rules.
To me, considering all she has done in her career, Maria Sharapova deserves a chance to play in the U.S. Open this year—deserves the wildcard invitation the tournament just gave her on Tuesday.
Sharapova is back from a 15-month suspension involving meldonium, a cardiac supplement she had been taking for years. The Open’s decision puts her—struggling with injuries and ranked #148 in the world—in the main draw. This probably makes a lot of people angry. They think the wildcard is too kind. That she isn’t worthy. Or that another player, one without any drug suspensions, is being treated unfairly. I understand that. But to say Sharapova doesn’t qualify for this gift doesn’t, to me, fit.
First, the supplement. It was suspended at the start of the 2016 season and Sharapova, somehow, missed the news. She has given weak reasons, including the fact that she knew the drug by a different name than the International Tennis Federation cited. But no one else missed it so badly. There’s no excuse.
But there’s also no reason to look at this as a crime. It’s unclear from testing how much this drug does—it’s not a steroid or a boost of red blood cells. And it took years for tennis to ban the drug. More than anything, it seems like an instance of caution, considering how many athletes take it. Sharapova lost a lot of time, and public support, for a drug whose benefits are not as clear as others, and that everyone knows she took because of ignorance.
Considering all that, Sharapova wasn’t “a cheater,” as young player Eugenie Bouchard put it, but someone who blundered during an otherwise spotless career. If Sharapova knew that the drug was illegal, she would have stopped taking it, as she has now. She wasn’t trying to cheat the system. She just ignored it.
And does she deserve the wildcard on her own merits? Sharapova won the U.S. Open in 2006, and reached the semifinals two other times. She’s had to miss the tournament three out of the last four seasons because of her suspension and injuries. Now, for the first time since 2014, she can play.
Part of what makes major tournaments special is the history behind them and the continuity from one line of champions to the next. That’s why it’s perfectly reasonable for the USTA to want to include Sharapova at the expense of another long-shot. The U.S. Open isn’t an exercise in pure maximization of sabermetric value: It’s a living, breathing tradition that means something to the sport itself. Which is why other former champions have been given wildcards, including Kim Clijsters, Lleyton Hewitt, and Juan Martin Del Potro.
“Thank you, @usopen,” Sharapova wrote from her Twitter account. “This is so so special. #goosebumps.”
She’s right. And so was the tournament committee for inviting her.
