She’s only 17, but now she’s public property. Today, surely and sadly, Melanie Oudin has the first true sense of what that means.

The world has heard the cute stories about her boyfriend, the words of inspiration she wears on her shoes, and how she has to get the latest news about prom from her sister.
If only fame would stop there. But fame never does.
Thursday morning, she awoke not only to read the account of her quarterfinal loss the night before, but the story of her parents’ pending divorce on the Web site of Sports Illustrated. The allegations that her mother has been carrying on with her coach. The gritty details according to her father, including the time Melanie allegedly called her coach at 1 a.m. and her mother answered.
The divorce was filed in July of 2008. None of this apparently was deemed suitable for wide public consumption as late as a week ago. But then, a week ago, she was not the darling of the U.S. Open and the new savior of American tennis. A week ago, she was not on the paparazzi radar screen or talk show hit list, with the ability to incite an autograph frenzy by just walking through midtown Manhattan, melting Times Square with her smile.
“I’ve gone from being just a normal, like, tennis player to almost everyone in the United States knowing who I am,” Oudin said in the post-match press conference Wednesday night about her first brush with celebrity. “There’s ups and downs I think to all of it. It’s just different for me, because I haven’t had to handle anything like that before. So I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”
Well, maybe.
It will be a work in progress, learning just how much she must get used to. No faster way to be tossed into that public relations microwave than to have a coming-out party in New York.
I will let the tennis experts debate where Oudin’s game will go from here, and how much of a boost she will be to U.S. women’s tennis, which lately begins with one Williams sister and ends with the other.
I wonder where the 17-year-old girl will go from here.
Life is sweet when you’re a wide-eyed teenager who freezes at meeting Roger Federer, and the tennis universe is suddenly your oyster. Today, Flushing Meadows. Tomorrow, McDonald’s commercials.
But not every headline will be so charming. It is the deal one makes with the celebrity devil.
Hers was not the only case of youthful public scrutiny this week. In Columbus, Ohio, where the mayor gets less ink than the Ohio State quarterback, Terrelle Pryor set off a furor by putting a name on his eyeblack patch last week against Navy.
Under one eye, he honored his sister. How nice. But under the other, it was Michael Vick. The media came panting after the story, and Pryor tried to explain, saying Vick was a boyhood idol. Then came some awkward verbal ramblings, when Pryor mentioned everybody does bad things, such as murder.
Not a very smart thing to say, But he just turned 20, and many people that age might fumble for words when surrounded by strangers holding out microphones and tape recorders, fishing for a social outrage.
Pryor quickly became a villain in some minds. Because he’s a bad guy? No. Because he’s the quarterback. And all this during USC week.
Just because a sophomore can scramble doesn’t mean he’s ready for a national forum on crime.
Just because a teenager takes the U.S. Open by storm doesn’t mean she’s ready to see her family’s dirty laundry in tabloids.
How much do we ask of them, when we are in such a hurry to make them famous?
“I don’t think of myself as a celebrity at all,” Melanie Oudin said. “I just love to play tennis.”
If only it could stay that simple. It seldom does.