Change and Continued Growth: An Essay on the US Open Women’s Final

Amy had intense feelings on the US Open women’s final, and so did I. So much so that we realized we needed two separate posts because I hand wrote a whole essay Saturday night to unpack it all.

Just like Amy’s post leads with, I also felt like Namoi was robbed of her true victory due to all of this. She was certainly outplaying Serena and deserved to be the only headline of the match.  Additionally it is the first ever grand slam win for a Japanese player, and that headline is being overshadowed as well. The level of play and mental composure Osaka brought to both this match and the whole tournament was incredible, couple that with her being only 20 and having only won one ATP event and her performance becomes hella impressive. I didn’t really know about her until I became enthralled with her match vs. Sabalenka and Amy was all about Osaka. But now that I  know who she is, I really love her! I’m really excited to see her in the Australian Open and hope she moves up even further in the rankings by the end of the tour. I am way excited for the Japanese fan onslaught in Melbourne given how much closer that major is for them! Should be fun to see because they’re such fun fans.

As for the main headline of the match, I definitely have thoughts. First, I will state the obvious, which is that I really love and respect Serena. No, I wasn’t cheering for her this match, but really I wanted Osaka to win because she’s the future of tennis and was playing so impressively. And while I love a legend and traditions, I really enjoy change and continued growth. Which, I believe, defines how I feel about the chair umpire’s and Serena’s behavior in this match.

First, I want to clearly state for anyone who doesn’t really know/watch tennis, the chair ump did follow all the rules and he technically did nothing wrong. He saw three violations to the code of conduct and he gave the correct punishments for them within the rules. This is not me saying he was right or he was wrong; this is me clarifying and bringing to light that the match’s series of incidents clearly exposed flaws in the rules and their penalties. It showed us all exactly where changes can be made that support the growth of the sport. Now that you understand that, let’s discuss that two of the violations were very subjective.

The first one, her coach giving her hand signals, was subjective not in that “was he or was he not” — he was and admitted he was on TV. It was that everyone does this. Again, it’s still a violation by the coach, it’s just almost never called. So why did the umpire call it here? We will likely never know, but in the moment Serena should’ve gone in her head: “WTF? No one calls that!” and mentally moved on back to the play knowing she had one warning and trusting her coach would stop all hand signals. I think the discussion of “why is this still a rule when NO ONE follows it” and “how much did that violation impact Serena’s play and the pressure she had on her?” still would have followed the match in a constructive way, as it would have impacted her even if she did not respond the way she did.

Regarding her actual reaction, I think she clearly misunderstood the violation to be against her for receiving coaching since she clarified to the umpire that she would rather lose than cheat to win. The violation was in fact only against the coach for coaching, not against Serena for receiving the coaching. So, this right here probably has you going, “Huh? So her coach messed up but she was at fault and bore the penalty for her coach’s behavior?” And you’d be right to be confused because it’s a really dumb rule with a really unbalanced penalty. In most other sports, if the coach breaks a code of conduct rule, it’s the coach who is penalized (usually a warning then is sent off the field). When I watched this match, I thought that’s what would happen. But no, it falls back on the player.

Because the rule is so dumb and the penalty so unbalanced, I felt the umpire should have clarified what violation he gave and that is was against her coach and not her. Especially since she clearly understood it to be an attack on her character and integrity. She continued to labor this point to him between play, even demanding that he both apologize to her for attacking her character and explain to the crowd that she was not in fact cheating. In my opinion, the chair umpire had more than enough opportunities within this series of conversations to explain his rationale, clarify he was not saying she violated the code, nor that he was insinuating her character was dubious. He either did not do this well enough or he did it so well that Serena thought he had removed the code violation. In her press interview after, she explained that they’d had a good conversation and she felt that things were good / restored between them. Obviously we as viewers were not privy to all that transpired, not to mention English isn’t the umpire’s first language and it’s very loud on center court. The fact that chance of miscommunication was so high, I felt that all efforts to clearly communicate and re-communicate exactly what happened, why, and what penalties remained in effect should have been made by the chair umpire. This is so important because of what happened next.

As someone who has seen many a Serena match, I simply cannot believe she would have broken her racket if she knew she was on her second strike. She’s way too smart and too mature of a player. Sure she would’ve been super angry with herself for a bad service game, but breaking your racket always results in an unsportsmanlike conduct code violation. Usually it’s the first one you get, not the second, so it’s only a verbal warning penalty. Here all I can say is “damn, girl” to Osaka for keeping her focus and holding that game in straight points.

Then comes the final code violation, the one that is the most subjective of the three, and in my opinion was major bullshit. At this point in the match, Serena was livid, felt insulted, felt the crowd possibly thought she had cheated, and overall was getting beaten by an excellent opponent who was playing her absolute best tennis. Serena was not in a good space emotionally, and even worse, her emotions were totally scattered. So she couldn’t even hone into one to fuel herself into battle focus mode. Instead of keeping it in, she chose to express herself to the umpire. Honestly, I don’t think anyone who has ever felt so slighted could blame her at all for expressing herself, even if there was an extreme risk of further penalty. The umpire was taking it too, and it was not until she called him a “thief” that he gave the verbal abuse code violation. When the head referee came out, you could hear him explaining that she called him a thief, so we know this is what specifically triggered him to give the verbal abuse code violation penalty.

To me, this is really critical because we have to look at how the umpire felt and if his reaction was appropriate within the context of his role (hear me out, readers!). The umpire’s role as I understand it is to ensure a fair match for both players (this includes continued flow of play, weather delays and breaks, crowd control, code of conduct violations etc. as well as good old fashioned line calls and overrules). The umpire is paid for her/his use of judgement and ability to act on it. To be clear, this chair umpire has an excellent record and is very well respected by players and the associations alike. So when Serena called him a thief, I feel she triggered the same hot button he triggered in her: calling into question his character and integrity.

We all know someone in our lives who values their integrity above all else, I know two people specifically, both very close to me, one is male and one is female. When they feel their integrity is questioned, they feel 100% attacked and go into battle defense mode. You gotta sit through their indignant fury for like 3 weeks until they cool off. It’s friggin’ intense. The saying really should be: hell hath no fury like a person whose integrity has been questioned. So take that person (maybe it’s you) and feel that anger, magnify it to the grand slam final level of visibility and importance, and that’s where both the umpire and Serena were at emotionally.

Now, this is where it gets real. Serena is perfectly allowed to have every triggered heated emotion she wants to have because she is a player. The chair umpire, however, is specifically there to be unbiased. So we have to ask: Did the chair umpire, given how he was now feeling, judge Serena’s behavior in a way that was unbiased and ensured fairness to both players?

The answer is no. In fact, I don’t think he even could have in that moment. I personally feel because the moment was so heated and made to be so personal for both parties involved, the umpire was best served to fulfill his role by:
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This approach would have been clear, concise, not potentially mis-inserted himself into the outcome of the match, and would’ve best ensured fair conditions for both players (remember, ensuring that fairness is his job).
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Ultimately I put blame on the umpire for the final penalty, as it was not appropriate for the setting nor was he entirely in an unbiased mindset when giving it. I also feel that the umpire did not do everything within his power to ensure fairness through his communication with Serena and with Naomi. In Osaka’s press conference, she said it was Serena not the umpire who called her over to explain that she had a point penalty. The penalized player should never be explaining that to another player.
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I also think this match called into clear question the validity of the coaching rule and showed that it has no business being a rule. If they want tennis to be only an individual sport, then the coach NOT the player should be penalized for coaching. Sending the coach off ensure they can longer coach, and penalizes them because now they can’t watch as well, which impacts their ability to coach after the match. It’s the perfect penalty and doesn’t impact the player how we saw on Saturday.

 

By not recusing himself in that moment of heated exchange with Serena, he inserted himself into the match inappropriately and caused an outcome that was different than if he had handled it differently. I definitely think Osaka would have won, and probably the resulting final score would have been the same. But by inserting himself the way he did, ultimately he stole something from Osaka: the unbridled pride and joy of winning her first grand slam title.
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The US Open, WTA, and ATP need to take a long, hard look at this match and its impact on viewership and on the sport itself.  It demonstrated in an ugly yet crystal clear way the need for changes to the code of conduct and the potential opportunity for retraining of umpires that better reflects the game’s growth into what it is today.
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