KLAMarine said:
Interesting vid: she thinks Serena was out of line but also thinks there is sexism in the sport... Wonder what she thinks of the ump's history in officiating? Another interesting perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTFguHi9E0
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I'm about as big of a fan of ESPN as I am of CNN, so that was tough to watch. I agree much more so with Smith in this case. Kellerman is out to left field. The argument about sexism and how men get away with some things woman don't, doesn't hold up for one main reason. Whether the player is a a male or female, the way they will treat an umpire is hugely dependent on their gender. Seeing a male player freak out and/or swear at a female umpire is like somebody seeing a martian. To try and make a case on equality would never work because if a man freaked out like they can sometimes, at a female umpire, you can bet in today's world they would never play pro tennis again. Which is somewhat part of the reason why your not supposed to lose your cool towards the umpire in tennis. There is also the fact that when men deal with men, and woman with woman, the way they conduct themselves is also very different. Men are willing to be more foul but are direct and straightforward towards other men. Woman are typically less foul and more indirect towards other woman. Serena should have kept on topic, and shouldn't have brought her daughter and her gender into the mix. That may have worked with another woman, maybe, but unless the man had no spine, she was screwed the second she brought it up.
As for your point about how the umpire called the match, that's just sports. I played on all the school teams growing up and played minor hockey in my hometown and it was always known that bad behavior and breaking the rules in any sport could potentially tip the scales in a game. I remember specifically in hockey that there were a few towns where we would go to play, who had refs that grew up with some of our coaches, and hated them, and they would clearly go out of their way to call unwarranted penalties on us for that reason. Here and there we would actually deserve it, but rarely. While unfortunate, when we had those refs in those towns, we would literally sit out our enforcers for those games to make sure we didn't lose due to penalties. We still lost sometimes over the years, but never would have won had we played with out full team and aggressively like we preferred to. Not like we were a rough chippy team or anything like that to begin with, but we were no different than the rest of the teams we would play against. There were also refs in other towns who were well known to go strictly by the book, take no prisoners, and those games sucked because they were super boring being so proper and paranoid, like you might as well be playing tennis.
Just because it's pro tennis, doesn't mean it's perfect. It's being played and officiated by people, so there is always a game of some sort being played within the game unfortunately. Since the athletes are the ones who are promoted and paid the big bucks, it really falls on them to be the better, stronger, more responsible person, win or lose. It's not completely fair, but nothing is. I don't completely blame Serena for freaking out in a high stakes match like that, but she just should have done so in a much more legitimate fashion that's all.
There is a reason royalty shows up to watch tennis and not hockey or football.
