Like so many things in life, the Serena Williams melt down at the US Open allows ignorant, non-tennis fans to find pleasure in piling on the distress of others. I am far from being a Serena Williams fan, but I am a true believer in the grandeur of sports and how athletes pushing beyond human limitations in competition is one of the greatest things in life. For those reasons, I am diametrically opposed to any kind of interference, whether it involves cheating by a player or outside factors (such as chair umpires), that adversely affects the level of either competitor.
Having said this, I think Serena overreacted badly, but this was a situation that could have been easily avoided by a referee who didn’t put his ego and rigidity above the historic nature of a Grand Slam final.
For those of you interested in tennis, I’ll start by providing context to the actual incident.
For those of you interested in art, jump down half way through this article and I will analyze the cartoon in question from the perspective of my professional experience as a graphic designer and art director.
For those of you who aren’t interested in learning anything, there’s a conclusion at the very bottom.
(And for those of you who can’t be bothered to read before making some ignorant snap judgment and then commenting, I have a TL;DR at the end to summarize and clarify my position.)
First, here’s what’s really below the surface summaries given in all the other answers posted:
- Since 2009, the WTA (women’s tennis association), has allowed coaches on the court in every event throughout the year except the Grand Slams. The fact that all the coaches signal their players and the inability of chair umpires to discern the difference between a thumbs up encouragement and a prearranged hand signal are the main reasons the WTA chose to eliminate the hypocrisy of the no-coaching rule. Unfortunately, the Slams are super conservative and are lagging behind the times. However, it is a rule that needs to change very soon, because you can’t condition players and coaches to act one way for 10 months a year and then arbitrarily punish them for the same behavior for two weeks at a time during the rest of the year. Because of the difficulty in determining each behavior, and the wide variation of chair umpire personalities to make what could be a totally subjective call, only a handful of actual violations are ever cited, even though the behavior happens all the time. Even worse, this year’s US Open allowed on-court coaching in the qualifying rounds and the junior matches. Do you see a trend there? This brings into question the arbitrary behavior of chair umpire Ramos during the women’s final.
- If we know that all the coaches are giving signals to their players, and we know that they are coaching throughout the match, isn’t it safe to assume that Mouratoglou would have been coaching during the first set, when Serena was losing and needed the most help? Does it make any sense that Serena’s coach would start to give her coaching when she was up 1–0 in the second set? If that’s true, that raises even more questions about the arbitrary behavior of Ramos. Why did he wait to call a code violation when Serena was up 1–0 in the second set and seemed to be getting back in the match?
- [EDIT- Having rewatched the video of the coaching violation, I corrected this section and got additional quotes.] The coaching violation was called with Osaka serving at 6–2, 0–1, 40–15. Serena was standing to return serve on the side of the court farther away from her box. Ramos, sitting in a 6-foot high chair, was at least 8 feet high and could easily see coach Patrick Mouratoglou’s hand signals. According to Mouratoglou’s post match comments, he admitted to coaching but said he didn’t think Serena saw him. Serena commented after the match: I literally just heard that, too, when they prepped me to come in. I just texted Patrick, like, What is he talking about? Because we don’t have signals. We have never discussed signals. I don’t even call for on-court coaching.” Williams said in response. “I’m trying to figure out why he would say that. I don’t understand.” Serena Williams Disputes Coaches Admission Of Coaching Her During US Open Final - UBITENNIS. Regardless of how people want to cling to a simple black and white interpretation of the rule book, the reality is the chair umpire made a completely arbitrary call on an infraction that did not aid Serena in any way. In his post-match comments, Mouratoglou also said Ramos should have quietly warned Williams to tell Mouratoglou to stop: “That’s what umpires do all year,”the coach said, “and it would have ended there, and we would have avoided a drama that was totally avoidable.” US Open umpire defended for simple reason: He followed rules in penalizing Serena Williams. From that point going forward, Williams went up 3–1. It’s entirely possible the chair umpire affected Osaka as well as Serena’s mental and emotional stability. I am in no way suggesting Serena could have won the match (I thought Osaka looked like the better player), but Ramos’ behavior ended up completely changing the flow of the match.
- Serena’s anger was based on her assumption that the code violation for coaching was an implied insult to her character. She protested multiple times that she is not a cheater. While Serena’s interpretation was wrong and her reaction was overly emotional, this was a situation any rational human being in the chair could have resolved in two sentences: “Serena, I didn’t say you cheated. Even if you didn’t see your coach’s hand signals, I did, so I called the code violation on him.” End of story. Serena can’t appeal that decision, she knows that she has a warning, and all the emotional turmoil of being accused of cheating disappears.
- Serena has had three other horrific experiences at the US Open. (I don’t know why this is, as there are far fewer incidents for Serena in other countries, but it’s one of those “coincidences” that make me wonder if there are not other problems between the Williams family and the USTA going on under the surface.) No one seems to mention the first instance, which happened to Serena at the 2004 US Open. She got four straight bad calls, with the last one being an overrule by the chair umpire on a ball that was called good by the linesman. Serena received an apology from the USTA and the umpire didn’t call any more matches at the Open. 2004: Mariana Alves’ missed call ushers in Hawk-Eye. I think that experience and her success as the best woman tennis player of perhaps all time made her feel that she was entitled to an apology, so she kept repeating the same complaint, while Ramos said nothing.
- In the foot fault controversy of 2009, Serena reacted so badly that people don’t pay attention to the referee’s incompetence. Foot faults are one of the most arbitrary and least transparent calls in tennis. You can’t challenge them with Hawk-Eye. And referees refuse to inform a player which foot is being called for the foot fault, which makes it impossible to know how to adjust. Tennis players spend years, even decades, perfecting their service motion so everything is exactly the same. The idea of a player foot faulting only once during a match is unlikely - if there was something illegal about the player’s foot position, they would repeat that movement throughout the match. The idea of calling a foot fault for the first time in a match at 6–4, 6–5 (40–30) is ridiculous. The idea that the situation should escalate into a point penalty to end the match is a black mark against both Serena and the chair umpire. In every other sport, when the referees change the outcome of a game with a bad call at the very end, there’s a major controversy about bad referees; when a linesman makes a call in the last point of a match in tennis, people blame the player.
- Finally, Serena was abused by a chair umpire in the “come on!” yell in 2011, Serena is justified in feeling that she has been a target of the refs. With regard to 2011 “come on” yell, there are at least ten women on the circuit who shriek, cry, grunt and yell so loud and for so long after they hit each ball, they could be called for intentional hindering on almost every shot they hit in every rally. Serena thought she hit a winner, and if you watch the point, even if her opponent Sam Stosur hit the ball, she had almost no chance to hit anything but a weak return that would have been put away. The key here is not only the disturbance, but what opportunities are taken away from the other player. For example, there are countless instances where a linesman or a fan calls “out” on a serve that is good. The umpire makes a judgment call to determine whether the returner had a chance to hit the ball or not. If the umpire determines the player could have hit the ball, they rule a let and replay the point. If the umpire determines that the returner couldn’t touch the ball, the ace stands. In Serena’s case, the umpire made the totally subjective call that Serena was intentionally hindering her opponent, when here opponent had almost no play on the ball. It would be different if Stosur was getting ready to hit a smash right next to the net and Serena yelled just as she was ready to put away the ball. When a tennis player sees the court position of their opponent, lines up a shot and crushes it, there is an extremely high probability that the shot will in fact be a winner. It was a key point where Serena was fighting to come back and thought she broke serve. Stosur is an excellent athlete, and touched a ball that would have gone past almost every other player on the WTA. I think Serena was wrong to celebrate early, but there is a huge difference between celebrating, and intentionally trying to throw off your opponent. In this case, you don’t reward the player that had no chance to win the point with a gift; worst case scenario, the umpire would call for a replay of the point.
- For people have never played tennis at an elite level, you have no idea how much pressure and emotion are involved in the sport. In team sports, coaches can call time out and sit a player on the bench when they lose control. Even in boxing, you go to the corner at the end of each round and have your team calm you down and coach you. People are applying a ridiculous double standard to a woman who has faced discrimination her whole life, and gotten screwed by controversial referee decision in three previous U.S. Opens. I’m not saying her behavior was acceptable, but because this was a US Open final, the world is jumping on her much more than incidents where lesser known male players have acted far worse.
- If you paid attention to what Serena said, she didn’t use any curse words. Every umpire knows what words you can’t say according to the code of conduct. Here’s John McEnroe throwing his racket twice with no warning or code violation. He then says (about a Lendl service ace he disputes) “that’s bullshit… no fucking way that ball is out,” and gets a code violation. As McEnroe starts to walk back to return serve he says “you’re so full of shit (unintelligible),” but receives no second code of conduct violation. So, it’s clear that umpires not only know what is unsportsmanlike conduct, they also know when to swallow the whistle. Serena is 100% right when talking about how badly the men can act and get away with murder.
- But outside of the prohibited curse words, the definition of verbal abuse is much more subjective. Carlos Ramos is known for being extremely strict. That is not something worthy of praise. Just because he felt justified to penalize Serena because she used the word thief, doesn’t mean he had to access the game penalty. Throughout the history of tennis and other sports, umpires accept more than their fair share of abuse without incident because they believe the sport and the competition is more important than their personal feelings. Giving Andy Murray a code violation because he used the word “stupid” in connection with the word “refereeing” may shield him from being called sexist or racist, but it doesn’t detract in any way from the fact that Ramos is an ego-driven authoritarian. Just like Serena, Nadal said after a fourth-round match at the 2017 French Open match that Ramos would “never chair another of his matches again.” US Open umpire defended for simple reason: He followed rules in penalizing Serena Williams. If one of the most gracious sportsman in the history of tennis said that, I blame the tournament committee for placing someone like Ramos in the chair when they know a star player has had past problems at the US Open. It’s just as ridiculous as letting Joey Crawford ref Spurs games back in the day. Former NBA ref Joey Crawford reveals David Stern made him get therapy after ejecting Tim Duncan for laughing.
- Osaka regained her focus and won the next game to make the score 3–2, then Serena broke her racket. The second code violation was a point penalty, so Osaka started the game serving at 15–0 and held for 3–3. Serena hit two double faults in the next game and lost her serve to go down 4–3. On the change over, she started going at the chair umpire again, blaming him for stealing a point from her earlier. The chair umpire called “time” at the end of the 90 seconds, but Serena kept complaining. The main problem I have with Ramos at this point is he made no attempt to diffuse the situation, or warn Serena about the consequences of continuing to rant. He could have said “if you don’t play now, I will call a time violation that will cost you the game.” Or, he could have said (in response to feeling that she was insulting him) “if you say one more word about my integrity, you will receive a third code violation and lose the game.” Sports is entertainment, and a Grand Slam final is a historic event. Fans want to see the best tennis possible and the best player win. Instead, Ramos intervened in the match, assessing a game penalty to give Osaka a 5–3 lead.
- After losing, Serena did everything she could to console and congratulate Osaka, who was visibly shaken by the whole affair. When fans booed the USTA officials giving a speech to begin the awards presentation, Serena asked the crowd to stop booing and give Osaka their appreciation for winning her first Slam. Not many athletes, either male or female would have the composure to get over their own anger and disappointment and turn things around completely in the matter of ten minutes or less. Serena might have behaved badly, but she showed incredible grace and class afterwards.
Now, let’s examine the cartoon, but first check out this photo of the two players together during the award ceremony.
If you save this photo to your computer and have photoshop, sample the colors in their faces, then do the same thing with the original cartoon.
Now, here’s the cartoon images blown up, so you can see the color palette used for each player. Notice how the lightest highlight color on Serena’s leg is a close match to the predominant color of Osaka’s face and her body, while the highlight colors on Osaka’s face are pretty much white. Meanwhile, all of the colors of Serena that are in neutral light or in shadow are much darker compared to the Osaka character. So please stop trying to say Osaka looks anything like she does in real life.
People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe, but Photoshop doesn’t lie.
So here’s more background info and analysis on the cartoon:
- Naomi Osaka has a Japanese mother and a black father. Naomi Osaka's Parents Tamaki Osaka & Leonard François She is a large, muscular biracial woman, and far from being a stick-thin blond white girl. If you want to know the RGB colors used in various parts of the cartoon, they are: Osaka character’s predominant face color = ccb39d; Serena’s forehead just under the hairline = c0a48f; Shadow areas on the inside of Serena’s legs = 957357.
- Osaka’s black father decided to have her represent Japan as a young player to get the best support from a national tennis federation, even though the family moved to the U.S. when Naomi was three years old. She has a refreshing respect for other people that is a strong part of Japanese culture, but she self identifies as black. Here’s a quote from her Wikipedia profile: [EXCERPT] In a 2016 interview, Osaka said: "When I go to Japan, people are confused. From my name, they don’t expect to see a black girl." [11] Again, any good artist looks for reference art and does some research on the subjects at hand. Why would an artist misrepresent Osaka in this way?
- As described above, the actions of the referee seemed to affect both players, breaking the flow of the match. Where is the humor in writing the caption “can you just let her win?” It has absolutely nothing to do with what really happened, except to make Serena’s temper tantrum look worse.
- Serena threw her racket and broke it. Just like Djokovic did during the Open, and I don’t know how many other players. Just do a search for Djokovic breaks racket and you will find at least twenty photos of Novak smashing his racket, ripping his shirt apart and screaming, often with no code violation. Here’s a video compilation of Djokovic breaking rackets, but there is not one cartoon of him. Then do the same search for Serena. She has far fewer instances, but gets mocked in the cartoon. (NOTE: Many readers have suggested that Serena acted like a baby, and I think this is a much closer approximation to the truth, as she kept complaining about being unjustly accused as a cheater and the umpire owed her an apology. My question is, if Serena’s main comportment was more closer to being a baby, why did the artist see fit to show her stomping on the racket, when the video shows her sort of crying toward her box, throwing down the racket and then walking to her seat. She doesn’t scream and she doesn’t jump. This is not King Kong stomping on a racket; it’s more like a child that didn’t get what she wants.)
- Let’s look at the Serena, and her cartoon. Then we’ll look at cartoonist in question and compare his caricature skills to how people look in real life. First, Serena screaming.
Now, let’s look at stereotypes of black people through history.
Hmmm, is there a pattern here? Let’s check out a whole gallery of coon stereotype images fomr the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia: Coon Stereotype Gallery 01. But there was too much for just one page, so please check out page two: Coon Stereotype Gallery 02
What’s going on here?
Now, let’s look at the cartoonist in question and compare his work to the real people.
Overall, this guy is a pretty average artist. He’s under tremendous time pressure to create art for a newspaper, so he’s got to exaggerate the most obvious features: Jong-un’s hair, Putin’s hairline, Trump’s hair and lips, Melania’s hair, and Bannon’s five-o’clock shadow. The better known the subjects, the more easily they can be identified.
Here are a number of caricatures of Serena by more talented artists.
Why do we know it’s Serena? Because they capture some similarities to her actual features: sculpted eyebrows, big hair, high cheeks, the beauty mark just below the left side of her mouth, and big lips. But wait, you say, how can these artists show an oversized mouth and big lips and not be racist?
Here’s the cartoon in question again. See if you can figure out the difference.
Okay, here’s the last clue. Here’s a another picture of Serena screaming.
There are three huge differences:
#1: The human version of Serena has TEETH.
#2: The human version of Serena has a flat tongue, just like this woman:
#3: The human version of Serena has a thinner upper lip relative to her lower lip, just like EVERY other woman on earth. When you exaggerate the expression, you still have an image that’s human:
When you exaggerate the upper lip, you get this:
Conclusions
We have no idea how Mark Knight was art directed to produce a cartoon about the US Open. I know he had to be under tremendous time pressure to produce a cartoon for the next day’s edition. After looking at hundreds of his cartoons, I also know that he hardly draws black people. Here’s the only other drawing I could find, and for some reason he does the big black lips when he clearly has enough drawing ability to get them right.
For most people who are not artistic, we tend to draw what we think we see instead of what we actually see. Knight doesn’t have that excuse.
Every professional artist I have ever worked with researches their subject, and gathers reference art to help guide their illustration. In addition, because of California’s diversity, we in the advertising business have to be careful not to offend any potential target market.
Those are my standards. I can’t say that I know what the standards are in Australia. Maybe they feel so isolated down under that they never consider the hot buttons of other cultures, or think that their newspaper will ever be seen by people in other countries.
Now, for those of you who are mathematically inclined, I submit the following data points:
- Online search for black caricatures yields 50 racist Jim Crow images in about 3 seconds.
- Searching through all of Knight’s cartoons to find one other cartoon of a black person: about 5 minutes.
- Searching through all of Knight’s cartoons to find one cartoon of a white person drawn with big lips: about 5 minutes.
People know how to use the internet. Knight could have educated himself in 3 seconds. Meanwhile some commenters dug deep trying to find the one exception (white guy with big lips) to somehow prove this is a normal occurrence.
The fact that he portrayed Osaka as a thin blond white girl is one of the things that raised my suspicions. It created an unnecessary and misleading contrast between a sweet white victim and an angry rampaging stereotypical black caricature.
We’ll never know Knight’s true thoughts, but I doubt he was trying to be intentionally racist, even if the image of Serena is far too similar to images that would be offensive to anyone, not just black people, who feel that racism has no place in American society.
Moving on to the text, if Knight wrote the caption, he completely misunderstood who the chair umpire helped, the absolute lack of respect for one of the most important women’s tennis matches of the year, and a possible historic effort by Serena who was trying to equal the Margaret Court’s all-time record.
Knight’s choice to focus on Serena’s broken racket, instead of the shit storm created by the autocratic chair umpire, or Serena’s incredible class show during the awards ceremony was a cheap, quick way to play for laughs, but let’s be clear about one thing:
The most important part of political humor is that it points out the absurd and hypocritical behavior of rich and powerful people, and hits them on a deeper level of truth.
Nothing about that cartoon even comes close to cutting to the truth.
And if you can’t tell the truth, say something creative and outrageous. The first joke that came to my mind would be Serena yelling “MOTHER#$%@?!!!” while stomping the racket as the umpire tells Osaka “I think she’s giving a parenting class.”
As stated before, there are countless examples of the men behaving a thousand times worse than Serena. That is why Steve Simon, the head of the WTA issued a statement condemning the double standard of tolerance provided to the emotions expressed by men vs women.
I would also add that I found some of Knight’s work creative and well drawn, which makes it more difficult to understand why he did such a terrible hack job in every aspect of the Serena cartoon.
I see no reason to censure Mark Knight or his newspaper. But if people want to attack him for being a lazy, sloppy, lying sack of shit, editorial cartoonist who may or may not be racist but is an obvious (or oblivious) supporter of the worst double standard in sports, he’s just as fair game as his target.
As inaccurate as his cartoon was, if Knight had just drawn an image even slightly like Serena, I don’t think there would have been as much as a backlash.
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[UPDATE] Thanks to all the people who felt the need to comment passionately about this issue after reading a few sentences of my detailed analysis of the issue on court and with the cartoon. It’s obvious you guys didn’t take the time to actually read what I wrote. Also thanks to some of the most thoughtful people who brought up good points that I addressed in my replies to them and then added to this post to make it more complete.
Just to be clear, I used the following phrases and adjectives to describe Serena’s behavior at this year’s Open and in the past:
- “melt down”
- “I am far from being a Serena Williams fan”
- “Serena overreacted badly”
- “I am in no way suggesting Serena could have won the match”
- “…Serena’s interpretation was wrong and her reaction was overly emotional…”
- “In the foot fault controversy of 2009, Serena reacted so badly…”
- “Serena might have behaved badly, but she showed incredible grace and class afterwards.”
If you are still unable to understand my views from this article, here’s the summary:
- I did not excuse Serena’s bad behavior in any way.
- I did not think she was the better player that day and thought Osaka was going to win.
- On court coaching is allowed in every WTA tournament except the Slams. It was even allowed for women at the US Open this year (qualifying and junior events).
- Coaches are signaling their players all the time, but it is far more likely for a coach to signal a player when that player is losing or playing badly.
- The chair umpire played a large role in disrupting the match by arbitrarily enforcing the no-coaching rule at the time when Serena was up 1–0 in the second set (I rewatched the video and saw that the racket abuse violation happened at 3–2). Why didn’t Ramos say a word during the first set?
- Serena reacted badly and took the umpire’s code violation as a personal insult. Any rational human being could have said “I didn’t call you a cheater. I saw your coach signaling you so the code violation is on him.” This would have completely diffused the situation.
- At 3–2, Serena broke her racket, which is a code violation. There’s no question she deserved a point penalty. The point I made was to compare the number of times she’s done it in her career with Djokovic and link to a video compilation of Novak’s behavior and the number of times he didn’t even receive a code violation. I made the observation that only Serena has had a nasty cartoon about her.
- Serena did not curse the referee. But we have tons of examples of players (mostly men) who curse a lot, and are not given code violations for each time they have an outburst.
- Serena used no words prohibited by the code of conduct. These types of discussion happen all the time, where a player attacks a chair umpire’s competence. It is up to the discretion of the chair umpire to diffuse a situation. One person responded that the code of conduct prohibits anything said to anyone which demeans their character, so I stand corrected about why Serena was given the code violation. It still makes me wonder why the Ramos refused to address Serena’s impression that the chair umpire was calling her a cheater.
- Ramos has a history of making these types of situations worse with his lack of communication skills and rigidity with both men and women. He could have easily shut Serena down with a direct warning that if she didn’t stop arguing after time was called she would get another code violation that would cost her a game. At that point, Serena would be completely at fault if she couldn’t stop herself from complaining.
- The WTA defended Serena’s claims about a double standard in tennis with regard to how men and women express emotion on the court.
- Cartoonist Mark Knight totally misrepresented Osaka, the umpire’s behavior, and the effect his decisions had on the match.
- Knight chose to focus on Serena breaking her racket and exaggerate her anger and facial expressions instead of her grace and class in the award ceremony.
- Knight, either intentionally or not, left out some basic elements from Serena’s face (teeth, normal tongue, thin upper lip) that made his artwork look far too similar to Jim Crow racist art, or which there are a huge number of examples.
- Searching Knight’s work, he almost never draws black people. In the one instance I found, he used the big lips trope.
- I think if Knight had used his normal level of artistic skill and given Serena the basic human characteristics that I pointed out were missing, there wouldn’t have been such an uproar over the cartoon.
- The extreme reactions of people on both sides of the cartoon issue are symptomatic of why the issues of racism and sexism are such hot button topics.
[UPDATE 2]: I wrote this post from my perspective as a former player and coach. In response to a number of comments about the original incident at the Open, I want to answer some specific questions and include the views of other players and some umpires.
How do the vast majority of umpires handle coaching situations to avoid confrontations?
Umpires pull the player aside and give a soft warning about the coaching: Victoria Azarenka hits out at 'grey areas' in Serena Williams coaching violationwho “believes that Ramos should have issued her with a soft warning before dishing out the code violation.”
According to Pam Shriver, a former player and now an ESPN analyst, “Ramos helped derail a championship match by being rigid beyond normal protocol by not giving first a soft warning for coaching, not communicating effectively to defuse an emotional player and by not allowing a player to let off more steam before giving the third code violation that gave a game at a crucial time in a final.”
What is the responsibility of umpires to communicate with players about the nature of the violation or at least warn a player about the danger of future penalties?
While current umpires support Ramos, three former umpires give varying degrees of support, but commented that he could have communicated better with Williams to explain the call, or, at the least to warn about the danger of getting a point or game violation: Was Serena Williams right or wrong? Three former tennis umpires explain
According to Billie Jean King, former world #1, and holder of 16 Grand Slam singles titles in a CNN interview. Billie Jean King: Serena was 'out of line,' but umpire 'blew it'
[EXCERPT] "Serena was out of line, there's no question, no one's saying she was a good sport," King said. "The point is he [Ramos] aggravated the situation."
King suggested that "everything would have been different" if Ramos had told Williams he wasn't attacking her character from the outset.
Asked about whether sexism played a role in the match, King said that it was still an issue in the world of tennis.
"Men are outspoken when they stand up for themselves. And women are looked at as hysterical," King said. "We are not. We are also speaking up."
How often do coaches coach from the stands?
All the time according to WTA players: Tennis players, athletes react to Serena Williams' dispute with chair umpire
How rare are coaching violations given?
At the 2016 French Open Ramos’ assessed a coaching violation against Venus Williams, while she was up 3–0 in the third set. Venus says she has never been given a coaching violation in her entire career.
Venus wasn't having it from the chair umpire in the midst of her 6-0 3rd-set demolition of Cornet. #RG16 @NBCSports
How arbitrary and subjective is the coaching rule?
This article from Wimbledon 2017 about coaching mentions two instances out of the hundreds of matches played at the tournament. Again, issue of coaching during a match raised at Wimbledon. Svetlana Kuznetsova and her coach were upset about the coaching in her quarter final loss to Muguruza and said this: [EXCERPT] "The thing is, the same umpire gave my coach a warning last year for telling me, 'Vamos. Vamos,'" Kuznetsova said. "Then this girl was talking to Garbine during the match. She didn't say anything to her. (That's) probably what surprised him a lot."
How do the men players feel about what happened to Serena?
Former ATP #1 and US Open champion Andy Roddick:
Former ATP #4 James Blake:
Mardy Fish, former ATP #5 and ESPN analyst:
.@espn just showed Serena and coach while he was “coaching”. She wasn’t even looking. Believe what you want.
And for those tin-foil conspiracy theorists who claim it’s only Americans who feel that the umpire should not have changed the course of the match, here’s what Novak Djokovic and former Indian Davis Cup player Vijay Amritraj had to say.
Novak Djokovic: Umpire 'should not have pushed' Serena Williams in US Open final. [EXCERPT] "But I have my personal opinion that maybe the chair umpire should not have pushed Serena to the limit, especially in a Grand Slam final," he said. "Just maybe changed — not maybe, but he did change the course of the match. It was, in my opinion, maybe unnecessary. We all go through our emotions, especially when you're fighting for a Grand Slam trophy.
Surprised umpire Carlos Ramos didn’t give Serena Williams a soft warning first: Vijay Amritraj. [EXCERPT] “If in fact there was coaching involved, he should have told Serena Williams right away ‘you better watch it, this guy (coach Patrick Mouratoglou) is giving you hand signals. You better watch it or I’m going to have him ejected.’ It’s been done before... But in light of the circumstances, he could have clearly handled it in a different way. He could have given her a soft warning during the break as she was changing ends. This is what he should have done. And if he (Mouratoglou) persisted, then the umpire could have given the warning.
In my opinion, (Ramos) didn’t go with that discretion. I was surprised that a professional of his calibre, he didn’t do that. If he did, it would have certainly calmed the situation.”
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