Serena Williams may have dominated women's tennis for over 15 years, but her disgraceful behaviour in yesterday's final of the US Open Tennis Championship shows her to be an anything but sporting in her outlook.
When she's winning, Williams is all smiles. Life is wonderful and she can't stop dancing around and putting on a 'giggly girl' act. However, when things don't go her way, as in yesterday's match against young Japanese Naomi Osaka, she adopts a different persona. Finding herself struggling, she accepted coaching from the stand for which she received a 'code violation' warning. Later, as her opponent proved more than a match for her, Williams lost her temper and smashed her racquet, this time drawing a point penalty for a further 'code violation'. She then continued to berate the umpire, finally calling him a thief; this resulted in her being penalised a game, after which Osaka, who had remained calm throughout, saw out the rest of the match and claimed the title.
Williams refused to shake the umpire's hand after her defeat, and later accused him of sexism in penalising her. In what was little more than a rant, she tried to divert criticism of her, saying that she was really "here fighting for women's rights and equality", although what this could possibly have to do with her on-court behaviour escapes me. In fact, from her lofty position as a fabulously wealthy, sporting superstar, I suspect that her behaviour did nothing but damage to women's causes, As a role model, she falls far short of other great female tennis players, those such as Margaret Court and Steffi Graf,
As well as the latest events, Williams has a history of arguing with officials and even abusing them. In the 2004 US Open, her defeat by Jennifer Capriati was attributable to a barrage of unforced errors, though she still accused the umpire of insanity and said she "felt cheated". In the same event in 2009 in a semi-final match against Kim Clijsters, Williams received a warning for smashing her racquet after losing the first set. Later, when serving to save the match, she was 'foot faulted', which gave her opponent 'match point'. This resulted in a furious tirade against the line judge, including profanities and threats. For this outburst, Williams was given a point penalty and, thus, lost the match. A further incident occurred in the 2011 US Open final when Williams again berated the umpire and threatened her; once more, she refused to shake hands at the end of the match, which she lost.
Williams is not the first tennis player to lose her temper on court - one immediately thinks of John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase from the past and Nick Kyrgios today - but her behaviour is wholly unacceptable, as are her lame excuses. Multiple winner of tournaments she may be, but great champion, sportswoman and role model, she is not. For that accolade, one has to look at the likes of Court, Evert and Graf amongst the women, Laver, Sampras, Federer and Nadal amongst the men.
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