Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka were at the finals of the US Open on Saturday, September 8th. Everyone was looking forward to the game because if Williams won, it would be her record of 24 Grand Slam Titles. It was a heated and intense game until it began to fall apart.
The umpire penalized Williams for getting coaching assistance during the game, which was later revealed to be true by her coach, but Williams had not seen the coaching. Because she had not seen the assistance that she was receiving, she went off on the umpire, who is particularly known to be strict and stiff on penalizations and did not pull back his decision. Then, the match was going badly for Williams and she lost the point to Osaka. Williams broke her racket and got penalized for that. Lastly, a final blow was given to Serena when she proclaimed that the umpire was "a thief" on the court. The penalizations built up and Osaka won the Grand Slam title, a first for Japan.
The heated argument between Williams and the Umpire sparked debate as well as discussion on the apparent sexist and racist ways of the umpire, which indirectly leads to the flawed ways of the tennis organization in general. Despite it being "just" a tennis game, something didn't sit right with me how people were bashing the umpire, people were taking sides labeling the 'good' as Serena and 'bad' as the umpire and how the winner, Osaka, and her feelings seemed to be left out of the picture and disregarded when she was a huge part of the entire game. It kept bugging me in my subconscious. I read numerous articles about how Serena has pointed out the flaws in the system and she didn't deserve to be treated the way she did. I'm not against any of those claims, but I recently read an opinion piece by Martina Navratilova on the New York Times that gave me more peace with this match.
Serena versus Umpire: who's right and who's wrong?
There is no bad or good guy in this, I think both the umpire and Serena were at fault, as Navratilova says in her article, but it was also just how the play had happened to play out; yes, there are apparent discrepancies between treatment of men and women (as well as race as many articles suggest) in regards to the tennis rules, which do need to be fixed (which I believe is a systemic problem more than an individual problem), but breaking a racket could have been avoided as could any other past breaking-a-racket-action could have in any past game or on any court.
Both parties could have acted better during the game. But at the end of the game, Serena Williams became the sportswoman that she is and whole-heartedly congratulated Naomi Osaka for her win. Yet because of the boo-ing, the arguments, and the confusion, Osaka apologized to the crowd and seemed to have mixed feelings about her win as the first Japanese woman. I think though, despite both Serena and the Umpire in the wrong and the controversy along with it, Osaka deserves to celebrate her hard work and her win.
