11 September 2018 — 0735 mdt

There’s no defense for Serena Williams’ bad behavior

Serena Williams is not a rookie on the professional tennis tour. She’s a 36-year-old veteran of the sport with an impressive record of winning. When she enters tournaments, she — and every other player — knows and accepts the rules. A the U.S. Open, she knew that coaching was forbidden, that smashing a racquet in frustration was forbidden, and that verbally abusing an official was forbidden (not to mention mean and lowbrow). And she knew that the chair umpire for her championship match against Naomi Osaka would be Carlos Ramos, a strict constructionist.

So it should not have come as a surprise to her when she was penalized because the coach that she hired and whose duties she defined was caught coaching. Nor should she have surprised that she was docked a point for wrecking her racket, or docked a game for calling the chair umpire a liar and a thief.

Losing to a younger, much better, player, she lost her cool and tried to bully the official. She has a history of that kind of thuggish behavior, and has incurred tens of thousands of dollars in fines with her tantrums and threats.

Now she’s claiming she’s the victim of sexism and racism when in fact she’s a victim of her appalling lack of self-control and vicious instincts. Why anyone is defending her is beyond my ken, but some are. Some of her defenders are tennis players, but one is the acid-tongued Rebecca Traister, the unhinged misandrist who writes poison polemics defaming men and who admits she doesn’t care much for the rules that Williams violated because those rules, in her opinion, prevented Williams from fully expressing herself and thus were unfair. Her argument is a masterpiece of special pleading, but if you love tennis and fair play you’ll want to quaff a double bourbon and Valium before reading it, and make sure you have your therapist’s emergency number handy.

I suggest reading the opeds in the New York Times by Martina Navratilova and Wesley Morris, and Des Bieier’s report on Navratilova and Mary Carillo.

Finally, I suggest the focus should not be on Serena Williams, but on Namoi Osaka, who won the championship without abusing the officials or accusing anyone of sexism or racism. She simply played outstanding tennis, keeping her eye on the ball and her mouth shut. Her performance was masterful. Her reward from the crowd of Americans was boos. That was an awful outcome that darkened Osaka’s moment in the sunlight of victory. The crowd, and their favorite, Serena Williams, disgraced themselves, their sport, and their country.

Can Serena Williams make amends? Yes. She can retire from tennis now.