Sloane Stephens lost in the first round of the Madrid Open — part of an eventful week for the 20-year-old. (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

The Report Card hands out grades for the week in tennis. Last week, off-court drama overshadowed some tremendous on-court performances.

Sloane Stephens: C-minus. I don’t know what pushed Stephens to go nuclear in her recent interview with ESPN The Magazine, where she detailed her deteriorating relationship with Serena Williams. This wasn’t a case of an unsavvy youngster running her mouth without anyone around to check her. Stephens’ mother cautioned her twice during the interview, but the 20-year-old just couldn’t help herself and used the opportunity to vent. Hey, I’m all for that. The last thing fans and media want is a player to take a page out of the Crash Davis handbook (link contains strong language) and give predictable answers that reveal nothing about her character or her thinking.

The return of ‘Serena Fridays’ on Twitter

What wasn’t clear to me from the story was whether Stephens understands her own role in concocting the mentor-protege narrative that she blames the media for blowing out of proportion. Stephens has spoken glowingly of Williams in various interviews, telling the media that the two “talk all the time” and that Serena has been “a really great influence” on her career. “I love her to death,” Stephens said of Williams before facing her at the Brisbane International in January. She may not acknowledge it, but Stephens was happy to sell the story until all of a sudden she wasn’t and then blamed everyone else for the myth-making.

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The Daily Bagel is your dose of the interesting reporting, writing and quipping from around the Internet.

• Video: Carla Suarez Navarro pulled off the early upset of the tournament Tuesday, knocking out No. 7 Sara Errani, a quarterfinalist last year. She did it with the help of this sick diving volley. Boris Becker would be proud.

• Looks like Rory McIlroy was up at 3 a.m. in Abu Dhabi to watch Caroline Wozniacki’s comeback victory over Sabine Lisicki.

Great comeback by @CaroWozniacki! Off and running at the Australian Open… Now I can get a few more hours sleep!—
Rory Mcilroy (@McIlroyRory) January 15, 2013

• As Steve Tignor writes, the highly anticipated first-round match between Roger Federer and Benoit Paire turned out to be a dud.

In the third set, the Frenchman commenced clown time in earnest—a drop shot overhead was soon followed by a two-handed forehand return, which, inevitably, led to volley hit (and missed) from between the legs. Along the way, Paire may have set the record for the worst challenge of all time, a joke query of a second serve that landed four feet long. It was one of the Frenchman’s eight double faults over the course of a very short match.

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