Minnesota Sports Forum

I agree. I feel horrible for Naomi Osaka. Serena took away her moment. Hopefully Osaka gets another shot at Williams and comes out on top so we are not talking about judges and talking about Osaka's performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTFguHi9E0

Well said, bleed. I'm a big fan of Serena Williams, but she acted totally inappropriately and deserves the criticism she is getting. Of course there is an element out there that wants to turn this into a racial thing (even though Osaka is half Asian and half Haitian!) or a sexist thing (there may be an element of truth here...the men do seem to get away with a lot more...but it obscures the real issue that Serena misbehaved). And the NY fans were terrible in booing the champion, but what do you expect from those nitwits?


Serena has been a terrific champion, but Osaka beat her fair and square. You're not going to have to wait long for the rematch...Osaka looks legit to me, and could be the next great champion. We'll have to see, but Serena clearly didn't have a prayer Saturday.

I'm not a tennis expert very far from it so I'm on the outside looking in. I don't know what is typical of these matches. I watched the whole situation. Play out via YouTube later. Serena certainly isn't blameless but it seemed ridiculous that this stuff made her lose any point towards this important match and ended up taking away from the moment. Regardless it was an unpleasant few minutes. I read a bit of Serena's history with sexism in tennis so it's quite frankly understandable that she would go there. Weirdest thing about this whole thing is now I know who a tennis ref or whatever they are called is. Lol

From everything I have heard the actions of the ump towards Serena were within the rules and consistent with how he has handled situations like this in previous matches for male counterparts. I will be curious what Trent Tucker has to say on in the zone this Saturday. If I remember correctly he is a big tennis guy.

People love to build people up as much as they tear them down. I just would love to see the focus go towards building up Osaka instead some perceived bad sportsmanship

bleedspeed177 wrote:From everything I have heard the actions of the ump towards Serena were within the rules and consistent with how he has handled situations like this in previous matches for male counterparts. I will be curious what Trent Tucker has to say on in the zone this Saturday. If I remember correctly he is a big tennis guy.

People love to build people up as much as they tear them down. I just would love to see the focus go towards building up Osaka instead some perceived bad sportsmanship

I read some more and tend to give the umpire more credibility than before. I'd be curious to hear what someone that actually knows tennis well has to say. I have a couple friends who are tennis players maybe I will cross paths with them or send them a message.

I agree with building up Osaka. The reality though is that this win for her is what will be remembered years from now not the spat especially if this umpire is a fair guy.

Serena acted like a 12-year old spoiled brat. She received a warning for "coaching" because her coach was coaching in violation of the rules. He admitted to it. When a coach "coaches" like that, the player gets a warning. Does every coaching violation get caught and end up in a warning? No. But not every foul gets called and the vast majority of speeders on the highway are never stopped. Serena later smashed her racked on the ground so hard in anger/frustration that she busted it. In professional tennis, you will invariably get a warning for that. When Serena did it, it was her second violation, which apparently results in a lost point.

Meanwhile she kept whining at and berating the official. In the NBA, you get called for a technical when you do what she was doing. If you keep doing it, you get a second technical and you're thrown out of the game. Her constant, repeated diatribe at the official, demanding that he apologize and calling him a thief, would have gotten her thrown out of an NBA game with two technicals. Actually, smashing her racket was worse than an NBA players pounding the ball on the floor in anger and as we all know doing that would be an automatic technical. Ultimately, her lack of self-restraint with the official cost her a game. But she brought it on herself. I watched the entire US Open tournament and didn't see any of the male players do anything remotely close to what Serena did. So she might want to leave the gender complaint to those who actually do suffer gender discrimination. She's not one of them.

Finally, she riled the NY crowd up with her repeated sanctimonious complaints to the official, which were heard throughout the arena. The crowd was already cheering for her to beat Osaka and she knew she had the crowd. Then, after losing the match, she stood on the platform as the crowd booed and only belatedly asked the crowd not to boo. I give her no credit for belatedly asking the mob to stop rioting after instigating the riot in the first place. You could see she loved the booing because it reinforced her self-righteous indignation.

Osaka won the first set 6-2 before Serena lost a single point based on her misconduct. So there should be no doubting the legitimacy of Osaka's win. You could see Serena growing increasingly frustrated by her inability to keep up with Osaka and that was really at the root of Serena's behavior. No matter how you slice it, Serena's behavior was juvenile, selfish and classless. I'll eventually give her credit if she publicly takes responsibility for her actions, acknowledges she was wrong and apologizes. But I don't see that happening.

In the meantime, I'll continue to root for Osaka who is a great tennis player and pure class as a person.

bleedspeed177 wrote:From everything I have heard the actions of the ump towards Serena were within the rules and consistent with how he has handled situations like this in previous matches for male counterparts. I will be curious what Trent Tucker has to say on in the zone this Saturday. If I remember correctly he is a big tennis guy.

People love to build people up as much as they tear them down. I just would love to see the focus go towards building up Osaka instead some perceived bad sportsmanship

Yes, TT is a huge tennis guy...but he's also Serena's biggest fan, so he may not be the most balanced person on this topic. I suspect he will defend her by pointing out the one mistake I have heard tennis experts say the referee made...apparently a ref is supposed to give an "unofficial" warning before the first official warning, and he skipped this step. I've heard two knowledgeable people say this, so I expect this is true.

Having said that and despite being a big Williams fan myself, there is no excusing her behavior on Saturday...I place 80% of the blame on her and 20% on the ref. I sense much of her bad behavior was due to realizing halfway through that she had no chance of beating Osaka on that day.

As for Osaka, I don't feel too sorry for her. She's a bright girl who knows Serena is immensely popular in NY, so she has to understand there is nothing personal in her getting booed...if this match had been played in Tokyo rather than NY, she would have been cheered and Serena would have been booed. Osaka is only 20 and the real deal, so she has many championships ahead of her. She's only 20 and currently ranked 7th, but I think she is better than Halep and Wozniacki already. And don't write off Serena yet...she had an incredible year for a woman coming off a difficult pregnancy and birth, and still has a lot of great tennis ahead of her. I'm looking forward to the next Williams/Osaka match!

TT blamed it on Serena Williams. He looked at it from being an athlete. She knew the rules.

bleedspeed177 wrote:TT blamed it on Serena Williams. He looked at it from being an athlete. She knew the rules.

I didn't listen this morning, so thanks for the update Bleed. Good for TT...it had to be diffucult for him to take that stance because he admires Serena so much, but it's the right position.