The slanging match between Casey Dellacqua and former Lleyton Hewitt coach Roger Rashed has intensified with the player insisting she is not overweight and out of shape as charged.
Rasheed, now the coach of Gael Monfils and a commentator at the Australian Open for the Seven network, said the Australian was not maximizing her fitness.
While Dellacqua certainly cannot be classified as svelte like contemporaries Alize Cornet or Dominika Cibulkova, the Perth player went ballistic when confronted with Rasheed's assessment that she was unfit.
Dellacqua is listed in the WTA media guide at 165 centimetres and 68 kilograms.
"If I'm a girl and I have broken into the world of tennis and I have made 500,000 dollars for the year, wouldn't I just try and get into the most perfect nick I could to actually excel?" Rasheed asked during a radio interview.
Aussie number two Dellacqua returned serve, calling the remarks "ill-informed" and "self-serving."
"He has no idea about my training programme, my fitness level or my injury history," she told the Herald-Sun. "I find it both amazing and totally self-serving that he now chooses to share his ill-informed analysis with the Australian public."
Rasheed, who made his name as a fitness trainer in Aussie Rules football in Adelaide, said he was surprised that some women on the WTA played with "excess baggage."
Added 57th-ranked Dallacqua, who lost in the first round: "I have never met Roger Rasheed. He does not know me or my tennis. He does not know my training techniques, my background or my personality."
NO SIBLING LOVE
World number three Dinara Safina says she has not been hanging out with big brother Marat Safin at this year's Australian Open as both siblings are concentrating too hard on winning the tournament.
Brother and sister are staying at the same hotel in Melbourne but Safina, who is chasing her first major at the season-opening Grand Slam, said she hardly saw Marat and did not want to pester him.
"We do live in the same hotel, yeah, but we're not sleeping in the same room," she said.
The 22-year-old said differing schedules meant she and Safin, the tournament winner in 2005, rarely ran into each other.
"I saw him once after my first round match and that's all," she said.
"Everyone is practicing different times and I don't like to bother him to go for dinner.
"He has his company, I have my company. Once the tournament finishes, then yeah, we can go all together but (now) he goes later than me for dinner. I go earlier.
"He has his life, I have my life."