{"id":9967,"date":"2018-09-12T11:38:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T15:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=9967"},"modified":"2021-12-23T20:18:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T01:18:00","slug":"rules-norms-unknowable-greatnes-serena-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2018\/09\/12\/rules-norms-unknowable-greatnes-serena-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Rules, Norms, and the Unknowable Greatness of Serena Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

All these things and people were no longer remote and negligible; they had to be met, they were lined up against her, they were there to take something from her. Very well; they should never have it. They might trample her to death, but they should never have it. As long as she lived that ecstasy was going to be hers. She would live for it, work for it, die for it; but she was going to have it, time after time, height after height.<\/em><\/p>\n

— Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark<\/em><\/p>\n

Serena Williams saw red<\/a>. For a few minutes on the court in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the greatest champion in tennis history was driven to anger so immense the world dropped away. The rest of the match, from that point forward, was about chair umpire Carlos Ramos\u2019 penalty decisions and Williams\u2019 fury. Their altercation and the intricacies of tennis\u2019 rule book became the basis for a conversation that leapt the barrier between sporting controversy and popular culture discourse.<\/p>\n

Williams has always been a lightning rod for criticism. She has had to fight her entire career for a place in in the white, male dominated world of tennis and no amount of on-court excellence will insulate her from baseless attacks on her humanity and character. Her passionate disagreement with Ramos is easy to miscategorize as an angry one between an entitled player and an umpire enforcing the rules.<\/p>\n

The Rules<\/h3>\n

The initial incident that sparked Williams\u2019 anger was a code violation for coaching. The rules around coaching in tennis are clear. The 2018 Official Grand Slam Rule Book states: \u201cCommunications of any kind, audible or visible, between a player and a coach may be construed as coaching.\u201d The enforcement of this rule is wildly inconsistent. Coaches often give direction to their players without penalty. Williams\u2019 coach said as much when he was asked about the incident immediately after the match. He admitted to coaching, said he did not think that Williams had seen the signal he gave to her, and noted that all coaches, in both men\u2019s a women\u2019s tennis, offer covert advice to their players.<\/p>\n

Williams reacted to Ramos\u2019 call instantaneously. She was losing the match \u2013 at this point Naomi Osaka had dominated the first set and looked solid at the start of the second. She approached Ramos, denied she had received any direction from her coach, and, pointing her finger, said in a ringing, clear voice, \u201cI don\u2019t cheat to win. I\u2019d rather lose.\u201d She was reacting to the implication of the call: that she was willing to break the rules to win as the match slipped away from her.<\/p>\n

Clearly influencing Williams\u2019 reaction, which could seem outsized to an observer \u2013 coaching violations are about the coach\u2019s actions, not the player\u2019s \u2013 was Williams\u2019 instinctual response to even the vaguest implication of misconduct. As early as 2001, tennis fans accused Williams and her sister of throwing matches to benefit each other and even a hint of impropriety would open the door to racist, misogynistic attacks on her character. Ramos, a by-the-book umpire, categorized the warning for coaching as an official warning rather than a \u201csoft\u201d or \u201cinformal\u201d warning, making it a first offense in the Point Penalty Schedule.<\/p>\n

Outlined in Article III, Section S of the 2018 Grand Slam Rule Book, the Point Penalty Schedule states: \u201cFirst offence \u2013 warning. Second offence \u2013 point penalty. Third and each subsequent offence \u2013 game penalty.\u201d Williams continued to fume at Ramos, eventually taking her frustration out on a racquet, smashing it after having her serve broken. This was a second offence: racquet abuse. Following the Point Penalty Schedule, Ramos docked a point from Williams. Osaka started her next service game at 15-0.<\/p>\n

The penalty, and the realization that the initial coaching violation call had been an official warning, angered Williams further. She thought Ramos had retracted his ruling. This misunderstanding culminated in her calling Ramos a \u201cthief\u201d for taking a point from her. For this comment, again following the Point Penalty Schedule, Ramos gave Williams a game penalty for \u201cverbal abuse.\u201d The score leapt from 4-3 with Osaka serving to consolidate her break of serve to 5-3 and Williams serving to stay in the match.<\/p>\n

Article III, Section P of the 2018 Grand Slam Rule Book states, \u201cPlayers shall not at any time directly or indirectly verbally abuse any official, opponent, sponsor, spectator or other person within the precincts of the tournament site.\u201d The rule is not detailed, but under most interpretations, Williams was likely in violation. There is obviously room for dispute, but calling an official a \u201cthief\u201d would seem to fall well within the bounds of the behavior this rule is meant to curtail.<\/p>\n

The Norms<\/h3>\n

Ramos is known as a stickler<\/a>. He has given coaching warnings before, even to top male players like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal; not a common practice. This was an instance where his fierce adherence to the rules was uniquely unsuited to the moment. He failed to understand or adapt to the emotional contours of what was unfolding on the court in front of him. Faced with a challenging situation he clung more adamantly to the rulebook. Ramos was technically correct in his warning and in both of his penalties. The literal correctness of Ramos\u2019 actions, however, does not change the fact that what happened to Williams was deeply, indefensibly wrong<\/a>. Whether or not Williams broke the rules is the least important aspect of what transpired between her and Ramos.<\/p>\n

Some analyses have focused on Williams\u2019 behavior. Martina Navratilova, a great champion who herself had to overcome incredible adversity to be accepted as a top athlete, wrote in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, \u201cwe cannot measure ourselves by what we think we should\u2026be able to get away with. In fact, this is the sort of behavior that no one should be engaging in on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Navratilova\u2019s criticism is valid, but misplaced. Of course, Williams\u2019 behavior was not ideal. However, as responsible as she is for her actions, the penalties levied against her were more draconian than those a man would face in the same situation. More so than Williams\u2019 behavior, Ramos\u2019 willingness to make calls well outside the norms of tennis rule enforcement is at issue.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 entire career has been predicated on her ability to rise above attacks on her personhood. She has been criticized for everything: her physique (too manly), her style of dress (too provocative), her style of play (boring\/too reliant on her serve), her words (not friendly enough), her continued winning (too dominant). She and her family have been subjected to overt racism on multiple occasions, most notably at Indian Wells in 2001 when the n-word was shouted repeatedly, leading both Williams sisters to boycott the tournament, one of the highest profile non-Slam events, for over fifteen years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Throughout all of this, Williams has kept on winning and fighting for respect. No matter how many titles she accumulates or records she breaks, the irreducible fact of her womanhood and blackness will forever damn her in the eyes of many. Anything about her that is less than perfect is pounced on instantly and magnified. But even perfection is unattainable in a system that refuses to acknowledge greatness in women and people of color, because no matter how astounding her achievements, she will be treated as inferior.<\/p>\n

Whether or not Williams broke the rules does not matter because that was never what the incident was about. It was about a woman, confronted with a perceived slight against her credibility and integrity<\/a>, feeling the weight of two decades of racialized, gendered attacks on her character, and responding. Williams has learned how to push that history and anger aside and win. However, in Ramos\u2019 coaching warning, to paraphrase Willa Cather, all of the things and people who had conspired to exclude her from tennis were no longer remote and negligible; they were present and trying to take something from her and she was not about to let them.<\/p>\n

It is neither normal for players to immediately receive true penalty warnings for coaching, nor is it usual for the Point Penalty System scale to be so hastily introduced. At some point, the umpire usually slows down the building altercation, whether it is between the two players or between the umpire and the player and says something like, \u201cIf you carry on like this, I will dock you a point.\u201d or \u201cIf you continue to speak to me like this, you will receive a game penalty.\u201d There is a moment of understanding on the part of the umpire that the emotions the player is feeling may be momentarily beyond their control. Williams was not extended this curtesy. Victoria Azarenka, a former world number one, said it best when she wrote on twitter<\/a>, \u201cIf this was a men\u2019s match it wouldn\u2019t happen like this. It just wouldn\u2019t.\u201d The implication being that an umpire in a men\u2019s match would have found a way to keep the situation from escalating, or that the accusatory “thief” epithet would have been brushed off and not treated as “verbal abuse.”<\/p>\n

Former male players quickly spoke out in support of Williams. James Blake and Andy Roddick both tweeted admissions that they had at times exhibited worse behavior when they were professional players and had not received similar penalties. This does not make their behavior or Williams\u2019 right, but it does make the severity of the punishments given to Williams unusual. It also indicates that behavior like that Williams displayed is generally accepted \u2013 or at least, more accepted \u2013 from male players<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Men, and especially white men, are allowed to be imperfect and have their aberrant moments excused. At the 2009 US Open<\/a>, in the final, Roger Federer argued with the chair umpire<\/a>. He was annoyed at the amount of time his opponent was taking to challenge calls. Federer\u2019s argument began with \u201cDon’t tell me to be quiet. When I want to talk, I’ll talk. I don\u2019t give a s***\u201d and culminated in him telling the umpire, \u201cDon\u2019t f****** tell me the rules.\u201d Under the definition of verbal abuse given in Article 3, Section P, this is a clear violation. Federer received no warning and during the course of the rest of the match, incurred no point or game penalties. The Point Penalty Schedule was never introduced. At the end of 2009, he was awarded the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award.<\/p>\n

An Imperfect Champion<\/h3>\n

Williams has always been an imperfect champion. And that is okay; great even. As the poet and essayist Claudia Rankine wrote<\/a>, \u201cShe shows us her joy, her humor and, yes, her rage. She gives us the whole range of what it is to be human, and there are those who can\u2019t bear it, who can\u2019t tolerate the humanity of an ordinary extraordinary person.\u201d In Saturday\u2019s final, Serena\u2019s excellence was unquestionably on display. She was being outplayed by Osaka, but the fact that she dominated the rest of the competition \u2013 some of whom were barely born when she won her first US Open in 1999 \u2013 one year after a life-threatening pregnancy, is a testament to her unkillable spirit. Catherine Whittaker, commentator for Amazon Prime UK and host of The Tennis Podcast<\/a>, noted that throughout the US Open Williams, though sometimes the last player to finish a match the previous night, was always the first on the practice courts the next morning.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has studied the history of racism, especially in the United States, would be unsurprised that beyond the solidarity of some former players, little understanding has been extended to Williams and two dominant narratives in the press coverage of the final were 1) that the penalization of a black woman\u2019s behavior was justified and 2) that the woman being penalized, more so than the man meting out the punishments, was responsible for the negative impact the incident had on another woman of color.<\/p>\n

The Unknowable Greatness of Serena Williams<\/h3>\n

Perhaps the most pernicious strain of commentary to come out of the Williams\/Ramos altercation is the implication that Williams somehow robbed Osaka of her moment of triumph. The ESPN highlight video posted on Youtube<\/a> is titled, “Serena Williams’ dispute overshadows Naomi Osaka’s final win.”\u00a0That could not be farther from the truth<\/a>. Williams defended herself against perceived slights sternly and eloquently until she was so overcome with emotion she was in tears. She was repeatedly offered no explanations, just increasingly severe penalties. The cloud cast over Osaka\u2019s win was one mostly of Ramos\u2019 making. By blindly enforcing the letter of the law, he showed how penalties are applied more harshly to some players than others. Still standing strong in the end was Williams who, during the trophy ceremony, calmed the raucous crowd and put an arm around Osaka, encouraging her victorious opponent to enjoy her first grand slam title.<\/p>\n

The aftermath of the US Open final has included a threatened umpire\u2019s strike of Williams\u2019 matches and a widely circulated racist cartoon that presents Williams as a screaming ape-like figure and Osaka as a silent caricature in the background; more proof, if any was needed, of the systemic racism Williams has always fought against. Even in the face of all this adversity, Williams will never stop fighting<\/a>. The ecstasy of competition burns brightly within her and as long as she lives, that ecstasy will be hers. She will live for it, work for it, die for it; but she will have it time after time, height after height. No one will ever dim that fire, or take it from her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All these things and people were no longer remote and negligible; they had to be met, they were lined up against her, they were there to take something from her. Very well; they should never have it. They might trample her to death, but they should never have it. As long as she lived that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2515,"featured_media":9926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,4],"tags":[3324,3862,476,25,3828],"class_list":["post-9967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-us-open","category-wta","tag-2018-us-open","tag-carlos-ramos","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-serena-williams","tag-serena-williams-us-open"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}