Not over who won, Naomi Osaka saw to that and did not need the umpire’s help, beating her idol Serena Williams in straight sets 6-2, 6-4. Osaka becomes the first Japanese man or woman to win the US Open. Despite this historical US Open, Serena losing would usually be enough to make headlines but unfortunately its about the confrontation between Serena and the umpire.
What happened?
Serena’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou was caught making hand signals to Serena during the match, something Patrick later admitted to. Coaching is not allowed. The chair umpire saw the signals and charged Serena with a warning for coaching. Not a big deal, this happens.
Serena then smashed her racket during the match. The umpire gave Serena a point penalty. Serena got upset. She demanded an apology and called the umpire a thief for taking a point from her. It is true she got heated but the worst things she said was that the umpire would never work on her court again and called him a thief. Need proof? Here’s the video. The umpire then gave Serena a game penalty, something that is very rare in a Grand Slam final.
What is the backlash?
Players are calling for change. Change on how much power the chair umpire has, if coaching should be allowed during games, etc. Serena also said that if she was a man, this would not have happened. Former tennis pro, James Blake backed up Serena’s statement on twitter saying that he had said worse and not gotten penalized. We will leave other sports out of this argument as we know we have heard worse in others. However, everyone seems to agree that the umpire should have at least told Serena to chill out or he would award a game penalty before doing so.
This sounds familiar…
It should. Serena has influenced rule changes before. In 2004 during another US Open, Serena was playing Jennifer Capriati in the quarterfinals and there were a couple of controversial line calls that worked against Serena. This in part led to the Hawk-Eye system that is in use today and the ability to challenge calls (each player gets 3 challenges per set).
She also called for changes to the Wimbledon seeding rules after being seeded very low after her recently pregnancy. Serena was technically ranked 183rd in the world after taking maternity leave and missing some crucial tournaments but the All England Club gave her the 25th seed. She went on to lose in the final to Germany’s Angelique Kerber.
Serena telling the crowd to stop booing
Moral of the story…
The situation could have been handled better on a lot of sides. This unfortunate drama overshadowed Naomi Osaka’s first GS win and Japan’s first GS win. Serena had to comfort Osaka at the award ceremony as most fans were booing. It is said they were booing at the result of the penalties and the US Open committee not at who actually won. Lets hope so, especially because as the score shows, Osaka deserved to win.
#GFHint: Straight sets means the match ended in the fewest sets possible. AKA one player did not win a set.
