Tennis player Svetlana Kuznetsova gives herself a mid-match haircut

When it comes to winning a tennis match or having long, flowing locks, Svetlana Kuznetsova apparently will choose earning the victory.

During her first round-robin match of the WTA Finals in Singapore, Kuznetsova’s hair was bothering her during play. So, on the changeover in the third set, the ninth-ranked player found a solution to that problem: cut it off.

In her seat on the sidelines, cameras caught Kuznetsova taking a pair of scissors and chopping off a chuck of her braided ponytail, letting the fistful of hair fall away.

At that point in the match, Kuznetsova was down 1-2 in the final set to defending champion Aga Radwanska. But without that chuck of hair holding her back, Kuznetsova stormed back, saving a match point en route to winning 7-5 in the third.

During her post-match press conference following the three-set win, Kuznetsova talked to reporters about the impromptu trim.

“Every time I would hit a good shot, it would hit my eye every time and I had [to] struggle,” she said, according to the Guardian. “I thought, ‘OK, what’s more important now, my hair, which I can let grow, or the match?’ I thought, ‘OK, I got to go for it right now’, and that’s it. I was not thinking too much, though.

“I was just trying to get the best of me ... I don’t even know how much I cut there.”

On Instagram, the player captioned a video of her performing the haircut with, “Sometimes you gotta do it not by best hairdressers and not at best time.”

The scene was reminiscent of one year ago when Andy Murray also took up hair styling during a changeover. Back at the 2015 ATP World Tour Finals, Murray gave himself a trim during a match against Rafael Nadal. Unlike Kuznetsova, Murray only took a bit off of his bangs and was a little more reticent to talk about it afterward, perhaps because he went on to lose in straight sets. 

“I don’t know why such minor things make such a big deal with you guys. I had some hair in my eye and I just wanted to get rid of it. That literally took two seconds. That was it. It was nothing to do with next week or anything to do with the outcome of this match,” Murray said a year ago, according to the Guardian.