TTI After Dark: Amy Schumer’s Tennis Satire

Welcome to a new column on The Tennis Island called “TTI After Dark,” where we share and break down miscellaneous or mainstream media’s take on the sport we all know and love.

Rockville Centre, represent!

The second season of Long Island native Amy Schumer’s Comedy Central show, Inside Amy Schumer, featured a hysterical tennis-themed sketch that surfaced on YouTube at the height of this year’s US Open. It might have landed under the radar with all the real life action getting in the way, but it’s definitely worth a watch now.

Schumer plays Amy Schumerenka, a cartoonish parody of Anna Kournikova, who gets demolished by the more talented – and more masculine – Bridget Everett. Schumerenka is cheered on by raucous sponsors, rabid fans, and ravenous commentators, who follow every titillating flounce from the otherwise outclassed beauty. Everett, by contrast, is criticized for her “distracting and disgusting” grunt and derided for her unappealingly horselike athleticism. The sketch concludes with a simple, if all too on-the-nose message: a loss in athletics can be surpassed by advantageous aesthetics.

For the diehard tennis fan, this video has everything: the questionable choice of sponsors on the court’s back splash, the commentators assuring viewers that Schumerenka is “great for tennis,” and even making Serenaesque references to Everett’s “infamous attitude problem.”

What did you think of the sketch, and what does what Schumer chose to satirize say about our sport or, perhaps, the media’s perception of it? Sound off in the comments!