Ready for Her Close-Up
The fiery Melissa Herndon fumed over lack of recognition on the Classic Tour (and exclusion from a certain magazine's holiday gift guide). But her aggressive play and quick rise up the rankings couldn't stay secret for long.
By Mike Geffner
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| Exclusion from BD's 2003 Holiday Gift Guide left Herndon a bit frosty. Here, we make up for the oversight. (Photo by Carla Bonner) |
We not only ruined Melissa Herndon's day but her month, if not her year. We made her hurt. We made her cry. We made her angry. In fact, to this day, the thought of what we did to her last Christmas still eats at her. We made her so sick that she even fleetingly considered quitting the professional tour.
All because we didn't ask her to pose for our special "Twelve Days of Christmas" spread.
"Here I am working my butt off, trying to get better, move up in the rankings, and for what?'" says the fiery 31-year-old Californian known as The Dragon Lady. "Why am I wasting my time? Why should I work harder to get anywhere on this tour when I'm always going to be ignored? I mean, you guys asked everybody in the Top 16 to be in that issue but me. And I know why - because I'm a big girl. Because I don't fit the stereotype for beautiful in this society. So I get passed over for girls who, quote unquote, look better, who are thinner."
"I'm so tired of it," she adds with a huge sigh. "God, it's so frustrating. We're so body conscious it's brutal. But that's the way the world works, I guess." [For the record, we maintain that her weight had nothing whatsoever to do with her exclusion. Melissa in fact had been featured earlier in 2003 with a full-page photo in a pictorial of regional tour stars.]
When the December issue of Billiards Digest came out, most of our readers thought the spread - which featured 16 players from the Women's Professional Billiard Association - to be nothing short of adorably cute: Monica Webb dressed as an elf; Helena Thornfeldt in a Santa outfit; Sarah Ellerby covered in goose feathers and wearing big yellow webbed feet; Karen Corr and Julie Kelly both blowing on bagpipes; and Ewa Laurance in pigtails, bib overalls and a Santa hat.
The preciousness, however, was entirely lost on Herndon. Instead of putting her in the holiday spirit, it provoked a fit of temper and a string of epithets. More than anything, what rankled the Dragon was that four of the players used - Line Kjorsvik, Tiffany Nelson, Sarah Rousey, and Megan Minerich (also featured on the cover) - were ranked below her. "I didn't have any resentment toward the players," she says, pausing before adding: "Well, maybe at first I did."
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