Can’t you just hear it now, like it was this afternoon instead of two years ago? Can’t you just hear Serena Williams putting on her contrite face for assembled reporters the day after threatening to stuff a U.S. Open tennis ball down an Asian lineswoman’s throat.
“I think the whole point of learning from your mistakes is not to do the same thing again,” she said in what sounded suspiciously like some well-rehearsed effort at damage control.
“I definitely would, I think, have a more professional way of voicing my opinion. I want to get another bad line call so I can get some more practice and see how I do. That would be awesome. OK?” She went on to apologize to anyone who was offended by her remarks in that 2009 U.S. Open final.
Uh huh. So, here we are, 24 months later, and Williams had her chance to be more professional. What was that The Who said? “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” Same old hair-trigger Williams.
If you somehow missed the latest Serena-against-the-world brouhaha, here’s the summary.
Having lost the first set and having trashed a racket in doing so, Williams was now down 30-40 in the opening game of the second in a 6-2, 6-3 U.S. Open final loss to Sam Stosur. She got a short return off a serve and powered a forehand toward Stosur’s backhand corner, screaming “Come on!” just after striking the ball.
This is, in tennis rules jargon, “a hindrance,” since it has the effect of distracting your opponent as she tries to play her next shot.
Eva Azderaki, one of a very few gold card women chair umpires, had the option of making it an unintentional hindrance and calling a let or making it intentional and awarding the point outright to Stosur. She chose the latter and, from where I sit, that is the correct call.
“I’m not giving up that point,” Williams argued as she approached the chair, as if she had the final determination. Azderaki, looking and sounding quite civil, explained her decision, but Williams just had to raise the ante. “Aren’t you the one who screwed me over last time here?” she asked Azderaki, apparently confusing her with another chair umpire, Louise Engzell. “Do you have it out for me? That’s totally not cool.”
Serena then got real personal, telling Azderaki “You’re a hater and you’re just unattractive inside.” Willliams glowered at her: “If you ever see me walking down the hall, walk the other way.”
I’ll get into the nuances of the hindrance rule in a moment, but let’s first talk about Williams’ choice of language.
Clearly, nothing she said Sunday rose to the level of a direct physical threat, as did her astonishing beligerence in that match two years ago against Kim Clijsters.
“Aren’t you the one who screwed me over?” she said. That’s petty and small. Certainly worthy of the code violation warning she received in addition to losing the contested point, but nothing worse than the stuff John McEnroe used to routinely aim at chair umpires.
“You’re a hater and you’re just unattractive, etc.,” she said. Very adult, Serena. Still, it’s nothing but trash talk.
But now, “If you ever see me walking down the hall, walk the other way.” You can interpret that one a few ways, but to me it’s an implied physical threat, and that’s not merely childish. That’s over the line. Way over the line.
And why? Over what? The Williams sisters have been aware of the hindrance rules since they were dropping hair beads on the court — years ago. Those were unintentional hindrances, which called for a replay of the point. They weren’t trying to litter the court.
In the Stosur situation, the chair umpire had the discretion to call a let. In fact, she could have made no call at all if the ball Williams hit was clearly going to be unreachable. In which case she could have simply cautioned Serena not to distract her opponent while the point was still in play.
But Stosur had a shot at a return of the ball. Though she probably was going to be forced to play a defensive return, who can say what she would have done with the ball if there had been no distraction. The point is not that she was going to make a weak return. The point is you can’t have players screaming at opponents as they try to play a ball. No one could seriously think that Serena was trying to distract Stosur, but she did, and that’s the bottom line.
Yes, we all know people in the audience try to distract players, but there’s no way to regulate that. What can be regulated are the players themselves and this isn’t the first time Serena has bellowed some encouragement to herself while a point was live.
It is probably for that reason that the chair umpire decided to award the point outright to Stosur. It cost Serena the game and that’s tough. But Williams knew what the rule was and, I strongly suspect, she knew quite well she had commited a violation with her scream of “come on!” That’s why her beligerence is so hard to fathom here.
She was fined $92,000 and placed on a two-year probation period for the episode in the Clijsters match, and it may be determined that she’s now violated the terms of that probation.
She got off easy two years ago. How much of a hand slap do suppose the Grand Slam Committee will give her this time?