Prince of Tennis: Marat Safin

Every other post seems to be about a Tatar lately, but when I was researching Rustem Hayroudinoff before, I checked out the "List of Tatars" at Wikipedia, and realised that we haven't featured Marat Safin yet.



Marat Safin is a Russian Tatar born in Moscow. He held the "No. 1" world ranking for nine weeks in November and December of 2000, at twenty years of age. His parents are former tennis players and coaches, and his sister Dinara is also a professional tennis player. At age fourteen he moved to Spain to pursue tennis at a higher level than was possible in Russia at the time.
"He is known for his good looks, large physical size, athleticism, controversial antics, and aggressive 'power' style of play. He is fluent in Russian, English and Spanish", Wikipedia informs us.

He's not supercute, at least to me (his nose is much too small), but he's not too bad for a tennis player. ^_^



When Marat is angry, he likes to throw his racquet on the ground. Yes, I can understand that a sport like tennis can be frustrating.
He is quite famous for his emotional outbursts. Especially Fabrice Santoro is able to drive him crazy - according to Marat, "being told I would play Santoro was being told I was to die". Now now, Marat, it can't be that bad, can it? It's just a little ball made of rubber and felted fabric ...



Young Marat (left) at his first tournament, in Tashkent, wearing traditional garb ... which doesn't really go so well with tennis shoes and tennis socks:



The above photos are from Marat's official website. There are LOTS more over there.

Marat being tall (193 cm):



Of course, fanboys and fangirls have also spread less dressed images of Marat all over the Internet:



(Argh, in these photos he looks a bit like this cute French guy I met at a party and then lost, after stupidly not asking for any contact details and even forgetting his name. But the French guy's nose was bigger and he had more beautiful eyes.)

That's a barcode tattooed on Marat's shoulder, under the eye. I wonder what would happen if you'd try to scan him with one of those price checking devices they have in supermarkets ...



The bloggers who posted these pictures weren't at all interested in the two other guys, so I don't know who they are.