The ending to the Serena Williams/Kim Clijsters match at the U.S. Open Saturday night was certainly a strange one. Down 5-6 and 15-30 in the second set, Serena faulted and then was called for a foot fault on her second serve. The foot fault gave Clijsters the point, making it 15-40 and double match point. Since the foot fault was so ill-timed, Serena Williams went off on the line judge who called the fault. The tirade was apparently so harsh that the chair judge docked Williams a point, thereby giving Clijsters the match. Wow. Check out the video of Serena Williams’ tirade:
Now this wasn’t an isolated incident in the match — Serena lost her temper after losing the first set and she smashed her racket, receiving a code violation warning in the process. Even though Serena was in the wrong in that situation, she also clearly foot faulted on that serve but was never called. To me there’s no doubt that both parties were in the wrong here. Serena was obviously high strung throughout the match, upset she was losing, and displayed poor sportsmanship. But Serena (as well as many others) was foot faulting most of the match and how often was she called for it? Calling it in that situation is extremely ticky-tacky. It’s like in football — half the time the defense lines up offsides but they never get flagged. Imagine that being called on a 4th a 1 to decide the game.
As far as Serena’s behavior, it was totally inappropriate and she really crossed the line with the ref, but didn’t tennis let Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe get away with berating refs for years? Heck, don’t they celebrate them for it now? Seems somewhat hypocritical to me. Both the judge and Serena were out of line in this one. Also, here’s the broken racket video:
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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 and is filed under Tennis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Serena’s behaviour was most unfortunate even though it was a bad call at a most critical stage of the match. I hope that she learns to better control her emotions.
I can’t stand people like that. You verbally, and everyone can hear it, threaten a judge. The judge says to the chair ump she was threatened and Serena denies it.
hate people who say their own quotes on video are lies about them
Someday she’ll be dead like everyone else in the world. She is as insignificant as an ant you step on, and don’t even realize you did.
The outbursts by Connors and McEnroe were difinitely offensive, but I don’t ever recall a match when they threatened physical harm to a line judge. Shame on Serena.
The rules, with warnings and point penalties, were put in because of Connors, McEnroe and others. Those rules would have resulted in the same penalties if they had been in effect back then.
Serena has always been a poor loser, as you have noted on this web site. She broke her racquet after the first set because she knew things were not going to go her way. We’ve all seen how she never gave a victorious opponent credit for beating her.
As far as football games go, rules are rules in both sports. I have seen many games decided in the last minute on ticky tacky pass interference or holding calls (including a national championship game involving the U) and on defenses lining up offsides.
I believe tennis should enforce foot faults from beginning to end on a consistent basis. As long as it is in the rule book, it is no different than a long or wide serve.
What a world-class surprise: a black person using the F word! Gee, Mommie, that almost never happens in real life. Hey, sports fans, you can take the ape out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the ape. And you crybaby liberals can save the e-mail calling me a bigot–I KNOW I’m a bigot! But don’t you liberals hate it when we’re RIGHT!!!!!!!!!
I’ve been saying for YEARS that these clowns (The Williams’) are low-class, and this just emphasizes the point!!!