Can I just say that making “coaching” illegal in a sport is the stupidest rule of all time?
What a terrible article.
The final paragraph is a beauty.
In other words, treat her differently because she’s special somehow. A stupid argument.
In rugby if you ranted at the ref like that and called them a liar and a thief you’d probably be red-carded, yellow if you are very lucky. Same in footy.
You probably wouldn’t have been given the degree of formal warming that Serena did.
“the other side of the stadium” is not a condition for calling coaching, so you really have two requirements: a) the gesture was coaching, and b) that Serena saw it from the other side of the stadium. The coach admitted he was coaching, so that covers a). There is no requirement to prove that the player received the communication, so b) is not relevant either. The rule would be unenforceable if the umpire had to prove that the player heard it.
That’s the rule - not ‘coaches shall not give coaching’. The onus is 100% on the umpire to be convinced that the player *received *coaching.
To do that, he had to be convinced she had seen his hand movements from the other side of the stadium.
If he’s going to give out that infraction - in the finals of the US Open - then he really really needs to keep that in mind as the rest of the evening unfolded.
*He set off the chain of events. *
If you think a ref in the NFL, NHL, rugby or football is penalizing players every time they here a player call them a bad word, you’re out of your friggen’ mind.
You see players yell at umps in baseball all the time about balls and strikes, and it’s fine. Is there a line that can get crossed? Absolutely - and players that cross it are rightly penalized.
But 99% of the time the player isn’t crossing the line, he’s just blowing of steam, and it’s not a big deal.
The good umpires know that - they accept that ultra-competitive athletes in hyper-competitive situations can get strung a bit tight.
In the situation at the time, and what was said, on the balance of generally accepted standards up until now, there’s no way what Serena did there that warranted a game penalty in the second set of a US Open finals.
The ump in question is supposed to be one of the best, but even the very very best in the world have off days (see Williams, Serena).
No. It’s saying that - like ‘umpire shows’ in baseball, people don’t come to see the umpire.
The umpire here made the match about him, not about the players. It’s the players the people paid money to see.
I thought there was plenty of bad judgement displayed by both Williams and Ramos, but Williams was getting beaten. She lost the first set, having lost serve 2x, and was down 0-1 in the second when the “coaching warning” was given. She broke Osaka, but then double-faulted to lose serve, and that was when the racket-breaking point penalty was given.
Looking back at the videos posted, the 2011 incident in the Stotur match with the umpire occurred when she had lost the first set 6-2, and was 2-1 in the second set. The 2009 foot fault incident in the match with Clijsters occurred when she was serving, down 6-4, 6-5.
Despite being the best woman’s player of all time, it seems that she does not always deal well when she is being beat in a match. Many times, she channels whatever feelings she has and roars back after losing the first set and crushes her opponent. In those (rare) cases when she does not, she appears to externalize her frustration. Sounds like a good time for a sports psychologist.
She was treated differently. If any other player had done what she did, they would have been DQ’d immediately and probably banned.
The attempt to give it a feminist spin is ridiculous. I have actually seen a “feminist” on social media claim that McEnroe and Nastase were never punished.
Serena Williams made the match about the umpire. Had she shrugged off the warning for coaching and got on with playing tennis the rest of the events need not have happened. However, she kept having trouble with Osaka, broke a racquet, decided to revisit the coaching call, and then, despite knowing that the next violation would cost her a game, abused the umpire. At any point after the initial warning, she could have decided to get on with trying to beat Osaka. She may have or she may not have but this whole conversation wouldn’t be happening.
Oh, and this quote:
misses the rest of the rule, which continues:
“Communications of any kind, audible or visible, between a player and a coach may be construed as coaching.”
In fact, the coach can be removed or the player immediately defaulted “in circumstances that are flagrant and particularly injurious to the success of a tournament, or are singularly egregious.”
sure, a sliding interpretation of the rules based on the popularity of the transgressor., what can possibly go wrong with that?
That doesn’t help your case, it helps mine. Note the may in there. Somtimes it may be construed as coaching sometimes not. Ergo - it’s a judgement call. Which goes back to my original point: If he’s going to make that call he has to be 100% sure that it was coaching that the player received (no way could he be sure of that) and then he has to keep that in mind the rest of the match.
Please, by all means show me an example of someone getting DQ’d immediate/banned for the equivalent for what she did.
While you’re waiting, you want me to pull up all the times people did far, far worse and got nary a warning?
Huh? It’s not a ‘sliding interpretation’ (unless you’re determined to make it so).
I place 70% of the blame for what happened on the umpire, 30% on Serena for losing her cool. But the chair umpire both started it and ended it, and both were horrible decisions.
Seconded (or maybe more like 90/10, IMO). And this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/at-us-open-power-of-serena-williams-and-naomi-osaka-is-overshadowed-by-an-umpires-power-play/2018/09/08/edbf46c8-b3b4-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html?utm_term=.5af80442c856
The vast majority of umpires and referees in any sport (including tennis) don’t give point and game violations (or equivalent) when a player uses a PG insult against them, and in tennis, the vast majority of a coach’s gestures are ignored by the officials. Even broken rackets are often ignored (I’ve seen Djokovic break many rackets without penalties, to say nothing of his yelling at officials).
I think that WP commentary is actually quite a measured and thoughtful take on this whole thing, and it’s changed my mind a little bit. Not because it changed what happened on the court, but because the author demonstrated that this particular umpire has been on the receiving end of similar language from male players in the past, without issuing a warning. I also tend to agree with the general principle (and not just in tennis) that the aim of the umpire should be to use a light touch, and to be as unobtrusive as possible. I hate it when baseball umpires blow little things out of all proportion in order to reinforce their authority over the players.
I still think that, within the rules of the game, each individual warning was justified, but these sorts of rules should be enforced with at least a modicum of consistency if they are to have any real meaning. To be honest, I think the rule against coaching is stupid anyway, but it’s there, and if it’s going to be there, then it should be enforced equitably. Same with the rule about insults.
I have a couple of quibbles, though: one with the WP article, and one with your interpretation of what’s going on here.
From the article:
Handed to her? Fuck that noise. Yes, it’s possible that Williams would have come back and won the match if not for the game penalty. Williams is an incredibly determined and skillful and competitive person, and she’s come back before. But anyone watching that match knows that Osaka was the better player on the night. She simply played the better tennis, and based on the actual tennis played on the actual court on the actual night, she deserved the trophy. By using the term “handed to her,” the WP writer makes it sound like she was on the verge of getting beaten, and only won because of the umpiring controversy.
And your description of Williams’ comments as a “PG insult” misses the most important aspect of the exchange, IMO. The seriousness of the offense here is not (or, at least, should not be) based on whether she uses foul language; it’s the fact that she basically made a direct accusation of cheating. By calling the umpire a thief, the clear implication is that he’s made a deliberate effort to circumvent or ignore the rules and unfairly deprive Williams of an opportunity to win the match. It’s the equivalent of accusing a football umpire of being paid by the other team, or suggesting that he change into the other team’s uniform so that his biases are more clear. In just about every sport on the planet, a direct accusation, on the field, that the officials are cheats will get you a red card (or the equivalent); if that’s not how it usually goes in tennis, then tennis needs to get with the program.
IMO, from 20 years of watching tennis, Serena’s attitude is pretty much identical to one of the milder long-time male tennis players (Federer, perhaps, who I distinctly remember yelling at officials on a few occasions without a point or game penalty). It’s more fiery than most of the women players, but not nearly as fiery as Djokovic or many of the men. But she’s penalized far more often, by my memory.
This is my biggest complaint. He could have tried to calm things down, but chose to escalate. He has the discretion to give warnings, and the biggest goal should be to make sure the game is as smooth and fair as possible, and his officiating made it less smooth and less fair in this instance.
The facts disagree with you. Unless you think he was the one who smashed the racket.
Serena escalated, Serena couldn’t let it go, Serena was the one who lost her cool because she knew she was getting beaten soundly.
None of this conflicts with my post. She behaved well within the common sets of behavior for the sport, in ways that usually aren’t penalized as they were against her, even though she made mistakes.
The umpire has a much greater responsibility to de-escalate than the player.
I actually favor keeping the rule, and consistently enforcing it. I understand the argument for allowing coaching, but I think coaching would result in players with no brain, who just have physical tools, being dominant. The top players would have teams of number crunchers feeding real-time tendencies to the coaches, who would tell their robotic meatspace avatars what to do. Sort of like the coaches are playing Wii tennis against each other, LOL. I like the idea of players having to make their own judgements on the fly, as the chess game of the match progresses.
Right? The rich get richer. I don’t like this concept in any sport (like Michael Jordan famously getting away with travelling).
This is a key point. At the risk of treading into political territory, it’s related to something I think is very damaging in general: accusations that the “system is rigged”. It’s why NFL coaches get in trouble if they say officiating is biased or corrupt. So it’s much worse to say the ref is a “thief” who “stole a point from me” than to say he’s an asshole or something.
And Serena wasn’t even consistent. Earlier she was arguing but she kept saying “I can see why you might think he was coaching, but I don’t cheat”. If she can see why, how is he a “thief”, as opposed to someone who made a mistake (in her judgement—never mind that her coach later admitted he was totally coaching).
We also have to recognize that the umpire would not have assessed the coaching penalty as the third code violation and game penalty. Maybe technically you’re supposed to use the same standards at all times, but when you have “zero strikes”, that’s the time to be a little more liberal with a warning for something just to keep the players and coaches on their toes and not making things really blatant. Then when you’ve got that “strike”, you have to have the awareness not to do anything blatant. Instead, Serena smashed her racquet in that situation.
This is no different from basketball or football, where officials may call fouls tight early, so-called “ticky tack”, to keep things in check, but won’t call anything non-egregious in the fourth quarter of a tight game (“let ‘em play”).
Please cite examples of Djokovic or Federer accusing officials of being “thieves” or “stealing”. Or, for that matter, threatening them with violence as Serena has done on at least two occasions. (Still wondering how those things do not equate to “low character”.)
My definition of character generally places far, far more value on real world behavior like charitable activities, helping children, etc., over heat of the moment and entirely verbal losses of temper. For example, I’d place something like, say, spreading white supremacist pseudo science as far, far worse (like literally a million times worse) from a character perspective over a momentary and entirely verbal loss of temper, but opinions will tend to differ on such things.
It goes caution-point-game-match as violations rack up
Serena got
- A coaching violation
- Violation for breaking a racket
- Violation for imputing dishonesty
Next violation would have seen her DQ’d. No 2, 3 are automatic, their is no discretion. And Serena knows it. Calling into question an officials honesty* is an automatic violation call. Which she did. Breaking a racket=automatic violation. Which she did. Which leaves the first, the coaching call. The coaching call is the only one where there is some question of discretion and judgement. In the event her coach has said that he was in fact signaling to her, so a correct call.
Serena knew the rules beforehand. Sorry but the umpire was correct.
*Seriously. If she had called him ugly that would not have been a violation, it was the substance of her argument not the fact if it which was the problem.
Are you saying that those off-court factors should be taken into consideration when judging on-court behaviour?