The winner of 23 major singles titles blamed all and sundry after falling foul of the rules and losing to Naomi OsakaThe turmoil that enveloped Serena Williams and Carlos Ramos during the final of the 2018 US Open had little or nothing to do with racism or sexism as it was widely portrayed at the time and is lingeringly perceived.However, from the player’s perspective it did have distant roots in prejudice and struggle, which exist beyond tennis. Also, it was made possible by an uneven battle of wills, the lauded and entitled champion bumping up against the inconvenience of authority, which is part of the culture of modern sport. Related: Serena Williams’s US meltdown was handled badly all round, says...
The US Open winner has the tools to win repeatedly but Serena Williams’s example shows the hurdles that may lie in her wayYou can have different views about the merits of booing at a sporting event. For some it is one of the few tools available to make your displeasure known: you’ve paid the money, you have the choice to moan like a disgruntled cow should you wish. For others, a group that may be classified as “decent human beings”, it is a bit mean-spirited and should be saved for when you come across David Cameron in the street.Another thing about booing is that it is indiscriminate. However clear a motivation may be in the mind of the boo-er, by...
Leading players must take responsibility for guiding the sport through good times and bad during this period of changeMany fine things happened at the 50th US Open, none better than Naomi Osaka’s dignified arrival and Novak Djokovic’s mighty return, none worse than Serena Williams’s meltdown. Nevertheless the sport overall is in rude health on court, even if some of the people who run it would struggle to get a start organising lifeboats on the Titanic.There were many surreal moments at Flushing Meadows – as there invariably are in this crazy business – from the way umpire Mohamed Lahyani got down from his chair to comfort Nick Kyrgios in full tank mode to the composure of his colleague, Carlos Ramos, who...
Serena Williams has a case when she suggests tennis can treat women poorly but there are countless examples of men being penalised for behaviour like hers in the US Open finalWhen Serena Williams threw away the US Open title she has won six times by calling the umpire “a liar” and “a thief”, she cited sexism as the root cause. No male player, she said, would be treated the way the umpire Carlos Ramos treated her.Sadly, she did her cause no good at all. Williams, while understandably upset, was wrong. Ramos, doing no more than his job demanded, was right. Intentionally or not, she accused him of bias that simply was not there – in these circumstances, at least. Related:...
The tennis player is one of the most unpredictable athletes in the world, but he can always be relied on for dramaThe main interview room in the bowels of Arthur Ashe Stadium was as packed with reporters and cameramen as you’ll find it after a second-round match on an otherwise routine Thursday afternoon during the first week of the US Open. The occasion was an audience with Nick Kyrgios, the mercurial Australian star who an hour earlier had seen off the Frenchman Pierre-Hugues Herbert amid sweltering heat and humidity on the fully exposed Court 17, where after what appeared to be a public unravelling was curtailed by an unusual intervention from the chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani, who descended from his...