US Open

[Rubashov]

What the hell is wrong with you people? Talk about having absolutely no class, just feel terrible for that young Japanese girl.

 

[Gameface]

Yeah, that's a ****ing embarrassment. Naomi is a champion. She earned it. This should have been about her, not Serena. She almost seemed ashamed to have won. But she was going to win, Serena was off her game and Naomi was way way way on her game. Serena was looking for excuses.

 

[Archie Moses]

I haven't seen it or read about what happened exactly. However, I have read Facebook comment sections on Sportscenter, USAToday, etc where people were saying it was clear racism and sexism against Williams. I'm going to try and find a clip of the whole thing, but what happened? If the ref was racist and or sexist to Williams it's the last thing that sports... errr... society needs right now.

 

[ONE LOVE]

I haven't seen it or read about what happened exactly. However, I have read Facebook comment sections on Sportscenter, USAToday, etc where people were saying it was clear racism and sexism against Williams. I'm going to try and find a clip of the whole thing, but what happened? If the ref was racist and or sexist to Williams it's the last thing that sports... errr... society needs right now.

Serena called the umpire a 'thief' for 'stealing her points' when she was hit with the 2nd warning. The thief comment earned her the 3rd warning which costed her 1 game.

 

[prodigy]

I wouldn't feel too bad, she did just take home 3.8 million for winning the US Open but yeah Osaka was clearly better on this day. Serena as great as she is doesn't know when to shut up. Found it odd how she brought up her daughter, like that has any relevance. Yeah the penalty for coaching isn't regularly enforced as much as it should but it is the umpire's decision. She threw a tantrum and broke her racquet, that is pretty common penalty whether you are a man or woman tennis player. The last one is debatable, but again Serena kept talking, at some point you have to just shut up and play. But congrats to Osaka, you earned it, first japanese woman to win a grand slam!

 

[bigb]

I haven't seen it or read about what happened exactly. However, I have read Facebook comment sections on Sportscenter, USAToday, etc where people were saying it was clear racism and sexism against Williams. I'm going to try and find a clip of the whole thing, but what happened? If the ref was racist and or sexist to Williams it's the last thing that sports... errr... society needs right now.

Not directed at you, but how is it sexist to favor one female over another (if it indeed happened)?

 

[Douchebag K]

clear racism and sexism lol she should have thrown in bigot, Islamophobe, homophobe just to cover all bases

nothing to do with the fact that she sucked and was clutching at straws Shame she's had a few of these petulant outbursts, they're pretty ugly

 

[prodigy]

She said it's sexist because "men do much worse and don't get penalized". I don't know about that Serena, you had two penalties against you and than DEMANDED an apology and than to top it off called the umpire a thief, basically the last straw. And how many times have we seen her do this now?

 

[ONE LOVE]

And how many times have we seen her do this now?

I heard on the news this is the 3rd time she had something major like this happened with the umpire at the US open.

 

[Douchebag K]

I heard on the news this is the 3rd time she had something major like this happened with the umpire at the US open.

she pretty much threatened violence against a linesperson last time, it was real ugly

 

[Stars Fan]

1 her coach was coaching from the stands. He admitted he was coaching. While not always enforced, it's always illegal. No problem with this warning.
2. Breaking her racket. Clear code violation. This is regularly enforced. Point penalty because it's the second violation. Again no problem with this ruling.
3. Abuse of the umpire. This one is not as clear. She did go on about it. Calling him a thief a couple of times. He enforced the code violation. Since it was the third violation, it resulted in the game penalty.
Umpire could have warned her to stop the rant, or he would enforce the penalty. She was clearly worked up and emotional, and the humane thing to do would have been to tell her before taking the game penalty. But he didn't. He was within his rights to do so, and he was consistent within the match.
Her complaint is that the men get away with worse. It is so inconsistent that I'm sure some do. Especially the big names are rarely called on the carpet so quickly. So maybe there problem isn't sexism, but elitism. In this case her expectation to be treated like a big name/ man.
When she found that this umpire would not bend the rules for her, she justified it as he was sexist. That is not justified unless this judge had taken similar abuse from a Male tennis player and consistently not enforced the rule. She would have known that he was not lenient, if she could have controlled her temper and thought about it. Instead she practically dared him to enforce it by going on the extended rant.

She did show class by calling on the crowd to stop booing and cheer Osaka.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using JazzFanz mobile app

 

[Handlogten's Heros]

1 her coach was coaching from the stands. He admitted he was coaching. While not always enforced, it's always illegal. No problem with this warning.
2. Breaking her racket. Clear code violation. This is regularly enforced. Point penalty because it's the second violation. Again no problem with this ruling.
3. Abuse of the umpire. This one is not as clear. She did go on about it. Calling him a thief a couple of times. He enforced the code violation. Since it was the third violation, it resulted in the game penalty.
Umpire could have warned her to stop the rant, or he would enforce the penalty. She was clearly worked up and emotional, and the humane thing to do would have been to tell her before taking the game penalty. But he didn't. He was within his rights to do so, and he was consistent within the match.
Her complaint is that the men get away with worse. It is so inconsistent that I'm sure some do. Especially the big names are rarely called on the carpet so quickly. So maybe there problem isn't sexism, but elitism. In this case her expectation to be treated like a big name/ man.
When she found that this umpire would not bend the rules for her, she justified it as he was sexist. That is not justified unless this judge had taken similar abuse from a Male tennis player and consistently not enforced the rule. She would have known that he was not lenient, if she could have controlled her temper and thought about it. Instead she practically dared him to enforce it by going on the extended rant.

She did show class by calling on the crowd to stop booing and cheer Osaka.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using JazzFanz mobile app

If we are splitting up the blame pie I’d say Serena gets most of it. She went on for a ridiculous amount of time in an extremely childish fashion. Screaming at the guy demanding an apology... he could have warned her but I’m not sure she stops. She’s saying she should get more respect but she treated the guy like a 4-year old.

Then everyone acts like she’s the epitome of class when she hugs the real victim... like saying someone’s a hero for putting out a ire they started.

Osaka was the only one robbed here... the crowd should be embarrassed.

 

[Archie Moses]

CNN had an article this morning about how it was sexism treatment towards Williams. I don't watch or follow tennis that much but they kept bring up examples of males who have yelled at the line judge for years - McAdoo, Agassi, etc. Players from a time when, imo, things were different. It's unfair to compare similar situations when they happened years apart.

The article also failed to mention Williams has a history of outbursts at the US Open so maybe that's why they were so forgiven.

After watching the video, it looked like Williams was overreacting and acting like a childish bully. I don't know tennis that well, so I could be wrong on not understanding her emotions, but to demand an apology, name call and threaten someone is a bit much for me. Wtf demands apologies like that unless you're in a ****** relationship or fake made on twitter?

I felt bad for the Japanese girl. She wins and all the feel goods she should be having are taken away because of drama.

I may just start watching tennis.

 

[ONE LOVE]

She did show class by calling on the crowd to stop booing and cheer Osaka.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using JazzFanz mobile app

Only after she went on complaining after the final handshake though. I thought that was pretty classless. She should have dropped the issue right then and there and maybe take the issue up with the WTA afterwards.

Instead she went on an on while the crowd kept booing and totally ruined Osaka's night. She didn't deserve that. Trying to calm the crowd at the end was too little too late.

 

[prodigy]

I heard on the news this is the 3rd time she had something major like this happened with the umpire at the US open.

 

[Eminence]

Serena has always been a piss poor loser. Not a problem much of the time because she's so damn good at tennis.

 

[ONE LOVE]

Had Serena let that first waring go she might have been able to salvage the match and been competitive and might even had a chance at winning.

But instead she went on and on with the ref and it snowballed from there.

 

[Thee Idiotic Minivan K]

Not directed at you, but how is it sexist to favor one female over another (if it indeed happened)?

Williams accused the the line judge of being sexist. She also said she did what she did so the next woman would have it better. She really milked being the victim in her press conference. In her defense though, they never call that coaching thing. I don’t watch tennis, so I don’t know if there is a history of women getting hit with that infraction more then men or what, but one thing is for sure, she lost her composure.

I’d be curious what some of the women here think, any that watch tennis?

 

[JazzGal]

I'm a fan of tennis. I unfortunately didn't watch this match, however. I do agree with Serena that women are held to a different standard of behavior in sports. Actually, that's true for most circumstances in life. Women are the gentler sex, after all.

But I agree with the opinion piece below that Martina Navratilova wrote in the New York Times. Just because you think someone else gets away with bad behavior doesn't mean that you should do it as well. (I've quoted the entire thing just in case you can't get to it by the link).

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/opinion/martina-navratilova-serena-williams-us-open.html

Serena Williams has part of it right. There is a huge double standard for women when it comes to how bad behavior is punished — and not just in tennis.

But in her protests against an umpire during the United States Open final on Saturday, she also got part of it wrong. I don’t believe it’s a good idea to apply a standard of “If men can get away with it, women should be able to, too.” Rather, I think the question we have to ask ourselves is this: What is the right way to behave to honor our sport and to respect our opponents?

To recap: The trouble began when early in the second set, Ms. Williams was given a warning for coaching. This one is on her coach: Patrick Mouratoglou was using both hands to motion to Ms. Williams to move forward and got called on it. While it is true that illegal coaching is quite common and that most coaches do it, it’s also true that despite what many commentators have said following Saturday’s events, they are called on it quite frequently and that most of the time, players just shrug it off and know that going forward, they and their coaches now need to behave, because the next infraction will cost them a point. The player is responsible for his or her coach’s conduct. And it is actually irrelevant whether the player saw or heard whatever instructions were given; either way, it is still an infraction.

Ms. Williams was not happy about this warning and let the umpire, Carlos Ramos, know it. So far, not so bad. (It is also common for the umpire to talk to the player first about the coaching — a sort of “soft warning” before the real warning so that the player has a chance to “muzzle” the coach. Had that been done, nothing at all might have followed — but we will never know.)

It was a few games later when matters really escalated. Williams lost her serve at 3-1 up and demolished her racket — an automatic code violation that, because it came on top of an earlier warning, resulted in the automatic loss of one point.

Ms. Williams opted to argue about this: She insisted that she didn’t cheat, she wasn’t coached, and therefore she shouldn’t have been docked. But it doesn’t matter whether she knew she was receiving coaching. She was being coached, as Mr. Mouratoglou admitted after the match, and whether she knew it or not is moot. So at this stage, she had been given a warning — one that couldn’t be dismissed retroactively — and had smashed her racket, an automatic violation. Mr. Ramos, effectively, had no choice but to dock her a point.

It was here that Ms. Williams really started to lose the plot. She and Mr. Ramos were, in effect, talking past each other. She was insisting that she doesn’t cheat — completely believable, but besides the point — while he was making a call over which he, at that point, had little discretion.

It’s worth noting that Ms. Williams has some serious scar tissue when it comes to this particular tournament. In 2004, she was subjected to some notoriously awful line-calling and umpiring in a match against Jennifer Capriati. In 2009, she suffered a self-inflicted wound when, at match point in a semifinal against Kim Clijsters, she lost her temper at a line judge, leading to a point penalty that resulted in her automatically losing the match. In 2011, in a final against Samantha Stosur, Ms. Williams lost a point for yelling, “Come on!” after hitting a forehand that appeared to help her regain her momentum in a game she’d been losing. She went on to berate the umpire, calling her “unattractive inside,” and was hit with another code violation.

All of this U.S. Open history, combined, perhaps, with always feeling like an outsider in the game of tennis — I know exactly how that feels — goes some way toward explaining why Ms. Williams reacted the way she did, and most of all, how she just couldn’t let go. But what is clear is she could very much not let go.

Much of the coverage has focused on what happened when Ms. Williams confronted Mr. Ramos a second time, demanding an apology and calling him a thief. Mr. Ramos handed Ms. Williams a third code violation — which cost her a whole game. After a long confrontation, play resumed. Naomi Osaka went on to win the match — her first major title, and the first major title for Japan as well — under an onslaught of booing and drama the likes of which, as far as I know, we have never seen in a final of a Grand Slam.

It’s difficult to know, and debatable, whether Ms. Williams could have gotten away with calling the umpire a thief if she were a male player. But to focus on that, I think, is missing the point. If, in fact, the guys are treated with a different measuring stick for the same transgressions, this needs to be thoroughly examined and must be fixed. But we cannot measure ourselves by what we think we should also be able to get away with. In fact, this is the sort of behavior that no one should be engaging in on the court. There have been many times when I was playing that I wanted to break my racket into a thousand pieces. Then I thought about the kids watching. And I grudgingly held on to that racket.

Ms. Williams was absolutely marvelous toward Ms. Osaka after the match. A true champion at her best. But during the match — well, enough said. The way Ms. Osaka carried herself both during and after the match was truly inspiring.

So is there a double standard in tennis?

We do need to take a hard look at our sport, without any rose-colored glasses, and root out any inconsistencies and prejudices that might be there. Tennis is a very democratic sport, and we need to make sure it stays that way.

But it is also on individual players to conduct themselves with respect for the sport we love so dearly. Because we all look so forward to the next time Ms. Williams and Ms. Osaka play each other; hopefully the drama will come from their magnificent shots and their fierce competitiveness — two athletes showing us how it is done, inspiring us all in the process.

 

[slc]

Why can't they have woman umpires for all women's matches
That seems like this would eliminate any sexist type accusations