Serena Williams was defeated on Saturday, by a 20-year-old Naomi Osaka from Japan. she secured one of the most memorable wins of her career.
She beat Serena Williams in the US Open, becoming the first from her country to win a Grand Slam singles title. As Osaka stood next to her idol at the presentation ceremony, she was overcome by emotion.
Perhaps the enormity of it all was sinking in. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by everything that had preceded that moment. Perhaps it was both.
Williams, hand on hip, reached out to put her arm around Osaka who had pulled down her visor to hide her tears. “I’m sorry I had to win like this,” Osaka said as she accepted her trophy.
Williams, too, took a moment to calm the jeering crowd urging them to make the moment memorable for the young athlete.
“Let’s not boo anymore.”
The crowd obliged. And Williams, fighting back tears of her own, briefly dissolved the tension that had marred what should have been a memorable match for the tennis, not for the antics.
At the centre of the storm is chair umpire Carlos Ramos.
During the second game, Ramos handed Williams a code violation for receiving coaching from the stands. Patrick Mouratoglou was spotted giving a subtle hand signal, a thumbs-up forward motion. Williams disagreed, she told the umpire: “I don’t cheat to win. I’d rather lose. I’m just letting you know.”
Things remained calm. Until Williams smashed her racket in frustration and this time was given a penalty to go with the code violation. Things unravelled. The 36-year-old was fuming, perhaps because she believed the earlier violation had been rescinded.
Definitely, because she believed the umpire was wrong. She repeatedly asked for an apology. She called Ramos a “liar” and a “thief”. That word, thief, resulted in the third violation – this time for verbal abuse. The penalty was the automatic loss of a full game.
“That’s not right. This is not fair. This has happened to me too many times,” Williams pleaded as the match unravelled.
She’s not wrong. Back in 2004, she was given an apology after bad umpiring and in 2009 , she got into a squabble with a lineswoman. In 2011, she was penalised for shouting .
Williams has long been fuelled by rage. That anger, a hallmark often praised in men, is frequently derided in women. Especially black women.
Predictably, the conversation that has followed since the final has largely dismissed Williams’ lived experience. Nobody is saying the tantrums are right, but as tennis legend Billie Jean King noted, the double standards are galling.
“Several things went very wrong during the (US Open) final today. Coaching on every point should be allowed in tennis. It isn’t, and as a result, a player was penalised for the actions of her coach. This should not happen.
“When a woman is emotional, she’s ‘hysterical’ and she’s penalised for it. When a man does the same, he’s ‘outspoken’ and there are no repercussions. Thank you, Serena Williams, for calling out this double standard. More voices are needed to do the same,” King tweeted in the aftermath of the weekend’s final.
Serena Williams and the balance of power in sport https://t.co/9WUD6s4ubH By Antoinette Muller
— Daily Maverick (@dailymaverick) September 9, 2018