The national press is gushing and fawning over tennis star Serena Williams, who has announced she will retire after this year’s U.S. Open, which began this week in New York.
People on hand for her opening match tonight, which she won in straight sets, included former President Bill Clinton, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Martina Navratilova (and her dog Lulu), Mike Tyson, Katie Couric, Matt Damon, Hugh Jackman, Spike Lee, Gayle King and Lindsey Vonn.
On StubHub, tickets for Monday night’s match accounted for more than 40 percent of sales for the first round of the tournament, and ticket prices were in the thousands of dollars for lower-level seats.
No doubt Williams is a fantastic tennis player and that she changed the nature of the women’s game, ratcheting up the power factor several times, but a lot of the people queuing up to pay big bucks to see her last hurrah have turned a blind eye to the breathtaking mean spiritedness and appalling displays of poor sportsmanship that she unleashed at times against umpires and line judges.
Let me give you a couple of examples from previous U.S. Opens.
In 2009, in a tightly contested match, a line judge called Williams for a foot fault — one foot going across the serving line before she made contact with the ball.
Irate, Williams turned to the line judge and said, “I swear to God I’ll fucking take the ball and shove it down your fucking throat.”
In case she hadn’t made herself clear, she added, “You don’t know me.”
The outburst resulted in a one-point penalty and a fine of $175,000, and she was placed on two years probation. She was also disqualified from the match because it was her second violation; earlier she had been issued a warning for slamming her racket to the ground.
Two years later, she unleashed a verbal assault on an umpire who called her for a “hindrance” after she hit a ball and loudly exclaimed “Come on!” while her opponent was attempting a return shot.
She told the umpire, “If you ever see me walking down the hall, look the other way, because you’re out of control…You’re a hater, and you’re just unattractive inside…Really, don’t even look at me, don’t look my way.”
She lost that match, too.
As far as I can tell, there were no further incidents in her career that rose to that level of seriousness. But from that point on, I never did like her and would not root for her.
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Today, Sports Illustrated has a big story about Williams and her U.S. Open career. The upshot of the story is in the headline, which says of her history in the Open, “It’s Complicated.”
The last paragraph accurately assesses her history at the U.S. Open:
“Serena Williams is an unprecedented athlete. She is also perhaps an unprecedentedly complicated athlete. In that sense, it’s fitting she concludes her glorious career—game, set, match—at a venue filled with so many personal ghosts and so much personal success.”
I agree that she is an unprecedented athlete who changed the women’s game. At the same time, I’m afraid those verbal explosions in 2009 and 2011 may well have showed us what she’s really like. Maybe she has changed. I don’t know, but I can’t bring myself to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Whenever I think about her, I think about those four words she uttered in 2009: “You don’t know me.”
I don’t want to know her any more than I already do.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
A talented — and complicated — tennis juggernaut, Serena Williams has provided incredible moments on the courts. For me, however, her outbursts have besmirched her career. I enjoyed watching her play, but shuttered at her temper. Thanks for your insights, Fitz. The photo was a great choice for this column
Ah, yes, the two elementary school grade card categories that would trip me up: Getting along with others and self-control. Maturity usually helps a person improve those categories. Tolerance of bad behavior – at home, school, socially, in sports or in the political arena – just makes it worse.
They tripped me up, too, Steve.
“Mean spiritedness and appalling displays of poor sportsmanship that she unleashed at times against umpires.” Change “she” to “he” and that would apply to a lot of major league baseball players and coaches. But in baseball that just seems to be an accepted part of the tradition.
I hardly find it surprising that a Black woman who grew up in Compton is angry. What I do find surprising is that entitled white people still believe they can successfully critique the manners of people whose challenges they can’t even imagine. Thankfully for John McEnroe he is a white male so all is forgiven. You have lost all credibility with me and for what it’s worth, I don’t want to know any more than I already do. Walk a mile in her shoes……
As john McEnroe might say, ‘You cannot be serious!” Obnoxious behavior from Johnny Mac and Jimmy Connors is forgiven as competitive intensity that enabled them to be champions, but Serena’s occasional foul-mouthed tirades are an excuse for you to cancel 20 years of being at the top of her profession.