Down one set in the 2009 U.S. Open semifinals against Kim Clijsters, Serena Williams faulted while serving 5-6, 15-30. Teeing up her second serve, she stepped over the line, and the line judge, Shino Tsurubuchi, called a foot-fault. The score, now 15-40, made it double match point. So the histrionics began. Serena’s meltdown — she threatened to shove a tennis ball down the line judge’s throat, cost her the match and she was later fined $82,500.
So it should come as no surprise that Serena Williams has another headline-stealing run-in with an umpire, as she did Saturday night with Carlos Ramos. It’s when she’s losing that she seems to have the most trouble with the referees.
Ramos had spotted communication between Patrick Mouratoglou, Williams’s coach, who was sitting in the stands, and Serena; a code violation that cost her a point, which she makes clear to Ramos, she views as an attack on her character.
Naomi Osaka had taken the first set 6-2. And Williams was clearly frustrated. As the match enters its denouement — Osaka breaks Serena’s serve 2-3, and Serena breaks her racket, for which Osaka was awarded a point penalty — Osaka’s next serve starts from 15-0.
“Every time I play here I have problems…That’s a warning,” says Serena. “I didn’t get coaching, I didn’t get coaching. I didn’t get coaching, you need to make an announcement that I didn’t get coaching. I don’t cheat, I didn’t get coaching,” she shouts to Ramos, pausing the match. “You owe me an apology.”
After Osaka breaks Serena’s serve, 4-3, from the chair, Serena gets into it with Ramos again. “For you to attack my character. Something is wrong. It’s wrong… You owe me an apology. You will never ever be on another court of mine as long as you live. You are the liar. When are you going to give me my apology? You owe me an apology, say it, say you’re sorry.” He responds briefly, to which Serena says, “don’t talk to me,” she takes a sip of water and then continues: “how dare you insinuate I was cheating. You stole a point from me, you’re a thief, too.” Ramos announces another code violation, her third: “Verbal abuse.” And it costs her a game point.
And so, Osaka’s up 5-3. Serena calls over Brian Earley, the head referee to dispute the violation. Earley tells Serena, you “called him a thief.” Serena at first argues that the citation is against the true nature of her character, “you know me, you know my character, that’s not right.
“This is not fair,” she continues, “do you know how many other men say things that do much worse that that. This is not fair.” “There’s a lot of men out here who have said a lot of things, and because they are men, that doesn’t happen to them…because I’m a woman, you’re going to take this away from me?” Serena thinks she shouldn’t be held to account for her bad behavior, because some men in the past haven’t been held to the same standard. But does that justify her outburst? If she hadn’t been coached from the sidelines, hadn’t broken her racket, and hadn’t relentlessly shouted at the referee, no code violations would be levied, no points docked.
There’s some merit to the claim of unequal application of code standards. Nadal, Djokovic, among others, have been cited for violations in the past sometimes, but so has Serena. To say that male players get away with the same violations all of the time because they’re male isn’t exactly right. Sure, the rules could be more equally applied. But it does seem awfully foolish to act in a certain way, year after year, as she concedes in her protest, and to be warned each time, and to still think the rules shouldn’t apply to you. But that’s Serena’s game; when you’re down, make a fuss, make it about something larger than yourself: the referees, the system, gender, whatever it may be. Then, you never have to accept defeat — it’s always someone else’s fault.
