The Trouble With Tennis

Did you happen to watch yesterday's women's final in the U.S.Open Tennis Championships?  I did, and it was, uh, unusual.  Naomi Osaka defeated Serena Williams 6-2, 6-4.  The second set was a theatrical hot mess.

Serena was penalized three times by the chair umpire.  The first was a warning for receiving coaching during the match.  The second was for smashing her racket after losing a service game, which cost her a point penalty to open the next game.  The third was for verbal abuse of the umpire.  She complained loud and long about the unfairness of the coaching penalty and ended by calling the chair a "thief."  Bam!  The chair called that outburst her third code violation of the match, which carries an automatic game penalty.  Instantly, and at a critical juncture, Serena went from down 3-4 to down 3-5 -- the brink of defeat.

I've played tennis and followed the sport since my pre-teen years.  I was a pretty fair high school player (conference champ, if I may brag on my long-ago glory days), played in city and club tournaments, played in leagues, and could still bang the ball around a little bit into my 50's.  Over the years, I've witnessed a lot of really bad on-court behavior but I've rarely seen a one-game penalty assessed.  Yes, Serena was mad and didn't control her emotions.  She lost her shit, basically.  But all things considered, I think the chair umpire could have handled himself better too.  The one game penalty was inappropriate -- too much, especially at that point.

In her first violation, her coach was indeed trying to coach her during the match.  He was making hand gestures to get her to come in closer to the net.  It is against the rules.  After the match, he admitted it freely, but added -- correctly -- that it happens all the time in big matches.  It's subtle, but everybody does it.   Why did this umpire pick this time and place and player to enforce a typically ignored rule?

And hey, Tennis Gods, what the hell is wrong with being coached during the game?  It's part of every other sport.  Why not tennis?  What's the harm?  Really, who cares?  But if tennis insists on no in-match coaching, why then do they allow coaches to sit courtside in the player's family/friends box?  If there's no coaching, then don't even let the coach in the building.

Serena's second violation a no-doubter -- smashed her racket to smithereens on national TV.

Her third violation, verbal abuse, was like the first one -- a subjective enforcement of an often-overlooked rule.  Serena yelled at the chair and called him names, but many other players have done the same thing or worse and avoided a penalty.  Serena's histrionics were nothing compared to the offensive tirades Jimmy Connors, Ilie "Nasty" Nastase, and John "Super-Brat" McEnroe.  Connors once called a U.S. Open umpire "an abortion" without consequence.  Nastase went unpunished despite cursing a blue streak during matches -- in his native Romanian.  But the regularly-profane McEnroe's luck ran out when he told a linesman to "go fuck your mother."  He was immediately DQ'd from the match.

Note that those bad boys date back to the 1970's-80's -- the heyday of modern tennis.  Back then, the old country club sport somehow found a way to tolerate a degree of highly "colorful" behavior and American tennis enjoyed the height of its popularity.

I'm not suggesting that asshole-ishness should be encouraged or that unsportsmanlike behavior makes a game better.  Every sport must have its rules, and rules are made to be enforced.  But the good ref or umpire knows how to enforce them wisely, using discretion as to when to blow the whistle and when to let 'em play.

The trouble with tennis is it still has too many fussy, nit-picky "rules" left over from its Victorian roots.  The all-white clothing rule has gone away, but tennis still gets its skirts in a bunch over what some players want to wear.  (You really wanna play in a goofy tutu?  Go for it.)  Like golf, the other country club sport, tennis insists that its spectators stay silent as each point begins.  (The crowd noise for other sports can be deafening, yet no one calls for quiet and the game doesn't seem to suffer.)  Tennis demands that its spectators remain seated during play.  (WTF?  Watch the damn ball, not the crowd.)  Tennis players are penalized for "audible obscenities."  (No sport should tolerate players M-F'ing the officials, but if you want to hear some audible obscenities, check out an NBA game.)  

And as we saw yesterday, tennis allows extremely uneven and subjective application of its code of conduct rules.  A more judicious umpire might have looked the other way at the silly coaching violation and might have ignored Serena calling him a thief.  That would have left a warning-only for the racket demolition -- no point penalty, no game penalty -- and perhaps an entirely different outcome.

Or not.  Serena might very well have lost no matter what.  But especially for the finals of the U.S. Open, yesterday's chair umpire injected too much of himself into the proceedings.

Tennis is a great game, but that's some of the stuff that makes it seem weird and persnickety.

Not to mention that mysterious scoring system.