On Saturday night, 20-year-old Naomi Osaka defeated Serena Williams, match favorite and 23- time Grand Slam title winner, in the finals of the US Open with a score of 6-2, 6-4. Osaka is the first Grand Slam winner from Japan, and this is her first Grand Slam appearance and her first Grand Slam win.
The night will not be remembered for this, however.
During the second set of the night, Williams was docked a point after smashing her tennis racquet, for being coached from the sidelines, and for calling umpire Carlos Ramos a thief. In total, she lost one point and one game, and accumulated $17,000 in fines.
According to the International Tennis Federation, which governs the rules of conduct violations, instances of unsportsmanlike conduct are set up on a multilevel system. For a player’s first offense, they receive a verbal warning. For the second offense, the player receives a point penalty (thus the docked point), and for the third offense and onward, the player receives a game penalty for each subsequent offense. William’s first offense- sideline coaching- triggered the first violation, which resulted in a warning. Her second offense, racquet abuse, cost her the point, while her third offense- “abuse of an official/umpire”- cost her a game.
Much of the controversy surrounding the match stems from Williams’ interactions with the referee, Carlos Ramos. Supporters of Williams- including Billie Jean King and the Women’s Tennis Association- note that if a male player were to compound the same types of infractions that Williams did- a common occurrence- they would either receive no warning or their behavior would be ignored. Ramos’s calls, then, would be an issue of sexism in women’s tennis, one that is often highlighted in the sports world for being particularly divisive. Recently, Wimbledon has been called out for the disparities in male and female match scheduling (with women on the court for only 38% of the time), while continuing to refer to married female winners of the tournament by their married names and the title ‘Mrs.’.
Fashion and tennis, too, have always been a point of contention- but only for female players, whose outfits are often seen as statements that reflect changing times. In the 1980s, Anne White pioneered the tennis catsuit, wearing such an ensemble to Wimbledon in 1984; the outfit was later banned. Even more significantly, the ‘catsuit’ controversy at the French Open- in which Williams wore a bodysuit designed to prevent blood clots- was subsequently banned by the French Tennis Federation as an outfit that did not “respect the game”.
Regardless of the objections of those on Williams’ side of the court, many still believe that she engaged in unsportsmanlike conduct that overshadowed what should have been a historic win. Significantly, fellow tennis star Martina Navratilova wrote in an opinion article for the New York Times that outlines the game and explained sportsmanship as the thing that makes tennis great, regardless of the gender of the players. “But it is also on individual players,” she notes, “to conduct themselves with respect for the sport we love so dearly.”