There’s no excuse for Serena Williams’s bad manners, says columnist Licia Corbella, and there’s no excuse for women not to play best of five sets.
Serena Williams doesn’t deserve any tennis love for her meltdown last Saturday at the United States Open final. Sadly, she is getting lots of it.
Caught as she was in a temper tantrum born of entitlement (like so many tennis aces before her) Williams insinuated that sexism by the tennis bureaucracy on the whole and the umpire, Carlos Ramos, in particular played a role in her being docked a game against Naomi Osaka, causing her to lose the match. Williams argued that her bad behaviour should have been overlooked and many commentators have chivalrously come to this damsel’s defence. That, in itself, is sexist.
The defence of bad manners is a serious threat to the orderly running of our society and is it any wonder? Look at the daily transgressions against human decency coming from U.S. President Donald Trump, who seems to start virtually every morning with some vile tweets calling people he disagrees with horrible names.
However, just because petulant, spoiled brat male tennis players have gotten away with worse behaviour on the pro tour doesn’t mean it was wrong for Williams to first lose a point and then a game for her tennis tantrums.
Here’s some background: Early in the second set, Williams was given a warning because her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was caught motioning for her to move forward. Mouratoglou admitted that he indeed was coaching from the stands. He was caught and Williams was warned.
Later on, Williams lost her serve, got mad at herself and smashed her racket, which is an automatic code violation, which led to the loss of a point since it came on the back of an earlier warning.
Williams started arguing with the umpire, who had no choice but to remove a point from Williams’s score because he had already warned her. Her arguing was futile.
This is where it got ugly. This gazillionaire tennis player — perhaps the greatest female player of all time — let the lowly umpire have it. She called him a thief and asked him to apologize for following the rules. It’s true that he could have given Williams a soft warning over the coaching violation and therefore would not have had to remove a point when she broke her racket, but he couldn’t reverse his earlier warning.
Williams refused to move on. Ramos eventually gave Williams a third code violation, which cost her an entire game. Osaka went on to win, which was her first major title. At least Williams showed a lot of class with how she treated Osaka, who was also very gracious.
All sorts of male commentators (and some female ones too) have come to Williams’s defence, saying men have been getting away with such appalling behaviour in tennis for decades and women are held to a higher standard. True enough.
Just because men get away with behaviour that violates the rules doesn’t mean women should. The rules should be evenly applied to both men and women.
At least, however, Serena is seeking parity. Her sister, Venus Williams fought and won for women tennis players to be paid the same as the men at Wimbledon and every other tennis event. The only problem is women only have to win two out of three games while the men must win three out of five at Grand Slam events.
Just last week, the women’s match lasted less than an hour and the men’s was almost four hours. How is it fair that they get paid the same? Tennis is actually one field that discredits women’s rightful striving for equality. It indicates that women want more than they deserve, which is not true.
Back in 2005, Venus attended the board meeting of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, which runs Wimbledon, and asked the members to close their eyes and imagine being a little girl who works as hard as any fella to “get to this stage, and you’re told you’re not the same as a boy ….”
Later that year, Roger Federer won the men’s Wimbledon championship game, collecting $1.13 million. Venus Williams won her game and a cheque for $1.08 million. That was more than fair. In 2007, Wimbledon caved to the pressure and started paying women the same as the men, something the U.S. Open had been doing since 1998. Little girls can count. They know women play shorter matches than men. It’s sexist.
Until women tennis players start playing the best out of five games to win, they shouldn’t be paid the same as the men. Women have as much stamina as men. The women’s marathon is 42 kilometres long, just like the men’s. Women have won the gruelling 1,850-kilometre Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska. Surely, they can play the best out of five games rather than just the best out of three. That would have given Serena a chance to actually rally back and beat Osaka.
Perhaps the Williams sisters should start fighting for that. Now that would be something worthy of tennis love.
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