Sally Jenkins sounds off:
Interesting perspective.
I liked this column from Sarah Kaufman more:
This DelPo - Djokovic match feels like such an anticlimax, just like the semifinals did, after that Thiem-Nadal match.
You must fucking hate men’s tennis, then. Because yelling at the ref is pretty common in that game.
Sure. But they stop when they’re facing a game forfeit, usually. It’s the sensible thing to do.
Agreed. Because the ref warns them that the next violation will cost them a game. That didn’t happen here.
I get that that’s the narrative, but I doubt you can substantiate that. Every player knows the code of conduct rules, and they can count.
Ugh. I always think that after a massive game like that (over 20 minutes for this game on Djokovic’s serve), the winner of the massive game is likely going to get a huge momentum swing and win the match. And I’m often right about that.
So that doesn’t bode well for Del Potro, since Djokovic just won that marathon game. 4-4 in the 2nd set now.
That was an unbelievable set, 94 minutes long (!), though a good 20 of that was one service game.
Djokovic is taking way too long to put the ball into play.
“Hard Courts” has a beat by beat account of Mac’s penalties for verbal abuse which ultimately got him defaulted right out of the Australian in 1990. He was surprised by the outcome but I don’t think the ref ever felt obligated to explain the rules to him. Haven’t read it in years though.
The media seems awfully sympathetic to Serena. She may have gotten a raw deal here but she also once threatened to cram a ball down a lineswoman’s throat…
The claims of sexism don’t make any sense to me. If it’s sexism that Carlos Ramos, a man, was the umpire for the women’s final (as I have seen some people claim), is it also sexism that Alison Hughes, a woman, was the umpire for the men’s final? Or is it the case that the Grand Slams (correctly) abandoned matching umpire gender to player gender some years ago?
The BBC at least tries to provide some numbers:
Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion, was one of 10 women punished for code violations at this year’s US Open, while 26 men were fined.
Most of the fines issued were for racquet violations - 14 men and five women.
Three men and three women were penalised for audible obscenity, five men were fined for time delays, while four men and one woman were penalised for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Williams was one of only two women punished for on-court coaching, alongside Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova, while no men were penalised for this offence.
The former world number one was also the only player punished for verbal abuse, which landed her a $10,000 (£7,732) fine - the largest issued at this year’s tournament.
It doesn’t like from those numbers as if the tournament was giving unfair treatment to women.
Best women’s match this year: Osaka vs Sabalenka. Both excellent players. I really hope this develops into a great rivalry in years to come. Both are very impressive players, and it’s a shame that the match was decided in the end by Sabalenka’s errors. Hopefully she’ll get better composure to match her great Tennis.
Best Men’s match this year: Thiem vs Nadal. It’s a shame Thiem didn’t win this, it came down to a couple of points at the end of a long grueling match. But what a match. In my ideal scenario of the men’s sport going forward, after Djokovic, Nadal and Federer retire, I’m not sure who will be the ideal rival for Thiem, but man, he is fun to watch against Nadal.
Including the commentators. The McEnroe brothers certainly made it clear during the Men’s final over and over that they think an Umpire should stay out of it, and not decide a match. That the umpire should have a light touch. I tend to agree. While technically, each of Carlos Ramos’ decisions were correct (the best kind of correct?), overall, the umpire ultimately has complete discretion and has to make judgement calls not just in isolation, but looking at the bigger picture.
Both McEnroe’s pointed out in the Men’s final that Alison Hughes could have called Djokovic out several times for time violations, and she’d be technically correct in doing so, but by not doing so, she left the play to the players and stayed out it, and perhaps that showed better judgement than Ramos showed in the women’s final.
The sympathy seems to decline the further you get from the US. Australian media has been scathing about Williams’ behavior in the match.
Personally, I think she should have called him for a time violation much sooner than she did. I don’t think she was trying to ‘stay out of the way’ as much as she was giving him more time because of the noise of the crowd. But that’s not to excuse him; he’s taking too much time bouncing the ball on every single point, and it’s tedious, and the only way he’ll stop doing it is if he gets called for it early and often, so call him for it.
John’s not exactly a disinterested party on that point :)
This guy was world #4 at one point, so he knows a bit about tennis and officiating:
That’s the point. Was it sexism, or just an official losing his own cool in response to a player doing so? I have no idea. This is similar to what we often see in baseball, where umpires will start booting players for any infraction that hurts the ump’s feelings. It’s obviously not sexism in baseball. It’s just bad officiating.
Nobody watches professional sports concerned about the officials’ feelings. They should not insert themselves into the narrative except in extreme cases. They should respect the fact that great players are sometimes very emotional in competitions, and they must react to that in a way that does not make it worse. Ramos made it much worse.
It’s also easy for me to assume it wasn’t sexism, or that it might not have been. As a white male, I have literally never wondered if I was treated badly because of who I am. I don’t have to consider that. I assume that a black woman tennis player might have lived through quite a different set of experiences.
I think umpires probably have to struggle all the time not to let the top players intimidate them, so that’s a factor too IMO. I’ve seen Federer give umps dirty looks a billion times, and he’s one of the nice ones. I used to direct fencing bouts from time to time … that kind of pressure is real. So umps push back against that constantly, and in addition Serena has a well-deserved reputation as maybe the most confrontational and irascible player on either tour since the heyday of Mac/Connors/Nastase. Ramos might have overreacted in the moment.
Speaking as a white male but also someone familiar with tennis history (ATP as well as WTA), I’m rather skeptical of the ‘systemic sexism’ angle here, but willing to have my mind changed.
As a side note, props to Djoker for Slam #14.
I remember cheering at the TV as Sampras clinched his 14th slam win at the US Open in 2002. Never would I have imagined that not one, not two, but three players of the next generation would go on to equal or surpass his achievement.
Was that the one in which he threw up on the court in an earlier round?
Edit: Oops, no, that was 1996. Wow. So long before retirement.