Wanted to chime in on the Serena Williams outburst despite my tardiness. Most of the country knows about Serena’s tirade at a line judge during the U.S. Open semifinal match against Kim Clijsters. Serena was down one set and trailing 5-6 in the second set. In the decisive game, at 15-30, Serena was called for a double-fault on her second serve.

First things first, that was a terrible call. There are times in sports where you don’t call little meaningless fouls or violations when there was no advantage. In this case, its hard to tell watching the videotape if Serena even foot-faulted. She probably did and it would have been defensible to call on her first serve, but lets look at the situation. If she did violate, it was just barely. Secondly, it was a second serve in which she was just trying to spin it in the court. Thirdly, that call gave Serena’s opponent double-match point.

Let me provide an equialent scenario in the NBA. It’s Game 6 of the NBA Finals, the Lakers are down two points with eight seconds left and Kobe has the ball. Pau Gasol stands in the lane for 3 1/4 seconds. Letter of the law, Gasol committed a violation. Any NBA official who would call that would probably be not allowed to ref the Finals again for five years.

Now, lets move on to Serena’s reaction. She walked over to the line judge and said, “If I could, I would stick this effing ball down your effing throat,” and she stuck her racket out and continued to yell at her. Because Serena smashed her racket after losing the first set, she was already given a warning. Due to the profane-laced outburst, she was penalized the next progression - one point. It just happened to be that point gave Clijsters the match, a unfortunate outcome that cheated the fans and Serena’s opponent, who went on to win the U.S.  Open title.

Following the match, Serena didn’t formally apologize for two days later in a statement most likely prepared by her handlers, and then went on Oprah to promote her book. If she said the same thing to an NBA ref that she said to the line judge, Serena would have been thrown out and suspended. Instead, she received a small fine and dent in her reputation.

Single-fault: Her poor sportsmanship
Double-fault: Failing to truthfully apologize on her own. If you need your handlers to tell you to apologize, it’s not genuine.

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Officiating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.