I believe Serena Williams has made a valid point about the game she has dominated for more than two decades.
The greatest tennis player in history — and it’s been argued she is the best ever, male or female — alleges she is the victim of sexism. She lost the U.S. Open final Saturday to Japan’s Naomi Osaka, a young woman who has idolized Williams since she was a little girl.
But Williams’s loss came amid some considerable fireworks. She got into a serious beef with the umpire, a male, who issued a game penalty after Williams was penalized because of improper contact during the match with her coach. Tennis rules prohibit coaches from issuing instructions to their “students” while they are competing. She didn’t like the first penalty and when she got the game penalty while protesting the first call, Williams went ballistic.
She argued that male players say much worse than she said, but they aren’t sanctioned nearly so severely. Indeed, history is full of on-court episodes involving notable male tennis stars who made their reputations because of bad-boy behavior: Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Ilie Nastase, Andre Agassi all come to mind.
I’m sorry and saddened that this episode has tainted Osaka’s first Grand Slam victory. And I don’t condone Williams’s outburst.
However, she makes a seriously valid point about the way the tennis gods treat male stars as opposed to the way the women get treated. If you’re going to assess sanctions against players for acting out on the court, then they need to be applied evenly and without regard to the gender of the athlete.
That’s what I heard Serena Williams argue for at the U.S. Open.
