German Tennis Star Andrea Petkovic Forced To End Trademark 'Petko Dance'

The Petko Dance is going the way of the safety dance.

You won't be seeing Germany's Andrea Petkovic do her much-publicized victory dance after some competitors deemed it insulting and rude, according to her father, Zoran. The Serbian-born star's dance, which went viral on the Internet last year, featured the 24-year-old shaking her backside to celebrate each time she won a match. Her dad claims other players bellyached the dance was too "over the top."

"[People] didn't tell me to my face and I don't read about myself so I wouldn't know [if there was criticism], but the questions they started saying, 'Don't you feel like it's disrespectful towards your opponent?' … and this question came up over and over again," she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Petkovic decided to shelve the shuffle to avoid repeated questions from reporters in the United States. "It's strange -- on the one hand the Americans really like me and they come to my matches, but they're like really bipolar," she told the Australian paper. "They either love me or they hate me."

Petkovic tacitly suggested she's a victim of sexism, especially since guys in the NFL and soccer are allowed to have similar victory dances.

"The thing I used to say was always, 'Listen, the soccer players when they shoot a goal and they celebrate with all kinds of things and they don't even win the match, and nobody would ever say something against them. Or the American football guys, when they do a touchdown they do a cha-cha-cha and nobody ever says anything against them.'"

While fans won't be seeing the popular "Petko Dance" anymore, she is working on her next move. Should you attend on of her matches in the coming weeks, expect to see the much more conservative "Petko Dunk," which is part of a lost bet with German soccer star Bastian Schweinsteiger.

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Petkovic began playing tennis at age 6. She's the highest ranked German singles tennis player in the world at 10th. The 5-11 right-hander speaks French, German, English and Serbian.

Tennis