Serena Williams reacts after a shot by Naomi Osaka, of Japan, during the women’s final of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo) You had a feeling that Serena Williams’ outburst was coming. It just wasn’t against her opponent. Already down a set to No. 20 Naomi Osaka, Williams was issued a violation for on-court coaching. At 1-0 in the second, the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, issued a warning to Williams and her coach Patrick Mouratoglou who was believed to be signaling to Williams. “I don’t cheat to win, I’d rather lose,” Williams said to the chair umpire before returning to the baseline. Replays, and a post-match interview with ESPN’s Pam Shriver, revealed that Mouratoglou was indeed coaching her, wanting her to move into the net more frequently. Serena walked up to the chair umpire, saying that she wasn’t cheating – swearing on the life of her daughter Olympia. "I don't cheat to win. I'd rather lose." —Serena to the chair umpire after receiving a coaching violation pic.twitter.com/v6Q2GWYYOn — espnW (@espnW) September 8, 2018 Williams was issued a second code violation six games later after smashing her racket as frustration continued to boil over. As she sat in her chair during the changeover, Williams demanded an apology from Ramos for accusing of her cheating. He refused and she called him a thief for stealing a point from her in a championship match. Ramos then issued a third violation, this time for verbal abuse against the chair umpire, costing Williams a game. U.S. Open officials came onto the court to explain the rules to Williams while she argued that she was being targeted because of her gender. Near tears, she said that her male counterparts frequently berate umpires, calling them worse than a thief, without getting penalized. After her next service game, she argued with officials in the corner again, saying that she was targeted every year by umpires at the U.S. Open. Story continues Mouratoglou admitted he coached Williams from the box, but also said she probably wasn’t aware he was doing so. Williams told Ramos that Mouratoglou was giving her a “come on” and a thumbs up, not coaching. However, he said that all coaches coach from the’ box, including Osaka’s coach Sascha Bajin, and that he believes a change in the rules was needed. He also said that Ramos frequently works men’s matches, but does not penalize players like Rafael Nadal for breaking the on-court coaching rule as often. This wasn’t the first outburst Williams had at the U.S. Open. She famously berated a line judge in her semifinal loss against Kim Clijsters in 2009 and again in her final loss against Sam Stosur in 2011. Williams went on to win her next game at love, but Osaka served out the match to win 6-2, 6-4. Serena Williams holds Naomi Osaka during the trophy presentation at the U.S Open. (EFE) Even with her outburst, Willams embraced Osaka after her first grand slam win. As Ramos exited the court and U.S. Open officials came on court for the trophy presentation, the Arthur Ashe stadium crown booed. Williams declined to answer question about her outbursts and asked the crowd stop booing to celebrate Osaka’s win. She gave Osaka, who became the first Japanese person to win a grand slam title, all the credit for the win. More from Yahoo Sports: • Report: Alabama’s Jalen Hurts to redshirt 2018 season • Ray Allen praises Celtics teammates during Hall of Fame ceremony • Pete Carroll unconcerned about reports that he coddles Russell Wilson • Lee Corso gets emotional on ‘Gameday’ while talking about Burt Reynolds<doc-sep>There was a wide reaction on Twitter to Serena Williams’ meltdown during her 6-2, 6-4 loss to Naomi Osaka in the U.S. Open women’s final on Saturday:<doc-sep>Many fine things happened at the 50th US Open, none better than Naomi Osaka’s dignified arrival and Novak Djokovic’s mighty return, none worse than Serena Williams’s meltdown. Nevertheless the sport overall is in rude health on court, even if some of the people who run it would struggle to get a start organising lifeboats on the Titanic. There were many surreal moments at Flushing Meadows – as there invariably are in this crazy business – from the way umpire Mohamed Lahyani got down from his chair to comfort Nick Kyrgios in full tank mode to the composure of his colleague, Carlos Ramos, who played it straight and refused to accommodate the illogical rant of Williams in the women’s final and then was subjected to the equally odd ire of officials more concerned with appeasing their star player than supporting a fine umpire for doing his job. The USTA said Lahyani went “beyond protocol”, while the WTA admonished Ramos for sticking to the rules, handing down its judgment at the very moment Djokovic celebrated his win over Juan Martín del Potro in the men’s final. But we move on. Over the next few weeks Chris Kermode, the chief executive of the ATP, will try to nudge the ITF towards a sensible route back to sanity over the Davis Cup. He has the ear of the players, whom the ITF has all but ignored in its ill-advised plans to move the final to November (when players grab a rare rest from the grind of the Tour) in a format meant to ape football’s World Cup. Good luck with that. Leon Smith, the captain of Great Britain’s Davis Cup team, who entertain Uzbekistan in Glasgow this week, made the sound observation that asking players to play back-to-back five-setters is at the heart of the competition’s enduring problem. Nobody loves the Davis Cup more than Smith. The ITF should listen to him and others voicing similar concerns. The millionaire backers of this proposed enterprise, with the Barcelona centre-back Gerard Piqué as front man, have pledged $3bn over 25 years to save the competition. It sounds suspiciously like a Boris Johnson promise on the side of a bus. 00:51 Serena Williams calls umpire a 'liar' and 'thief' as Naomi Osaka wins US Open final – video Similarly Roger Federer’s Laver Cup, which moves to Chicago after a promising if expensive debut in his home town of Basel, has yet to establish the basic criterion of any sporting endeavour – credibility as a contest. Does anyone care who wins it? If it does not establish itself as a genuine sporting contest – as opposed to a star-studded exhibition – it will not last more than a few years, much as the International Premier Tennis League collapsed in 2017 after three years. A lot of rich players got richer; not many people cared. Ultimately the sport is about the players. It is their responsibility and privilege to carry the sport through stormy waters and sunnier days. Too often they are distracted by some of these schemes, simultaneously complaining of burnout and cashing in by playing even more – and meaningless – tennis. Sign up to The Recap, our weekly email of editors’ picks. Wonderful player as Djokovic is, he sometimes struggles to avoid coming across as Jesus Christ. “Roaring for my sport,” he tweeted after winning his third US Open on Sunday night, and his 14th major, “my wife and kids, my whole family, my people. Love to everyone. It feels good to be back.” And who could begrudge him? He has won two majors since his elbow surgery at the start of the year and might yet finish the year at No 1 in the world. Djokovic underlined the stark fact that the next generation are not yet ready to replace him and the other members of the Big Four – although Andy Murray is still working his way back towards membership of sport’s most exclusive club. It would be fitting if Murray, Djokovic, Federer and Rafael Nadal ended their careers together at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Murray has his two gold medals to defend, Federer needs one to round a complete set of titles, Djokovic is likely to be still “roaring” and Nadal will not want to go before the others, however strong the call of golf and fishing in his Mallorcan paradise. Osaka will be there, too, hopefully – back in the country where she was born. She is a remarkable player and person: funny, wise beyond her 20 years and talented. She would not say a bad word about Williams, who almost spoiled her night in Saturday’s final, because she adores her. There is so much to admire about Williams as well, even if she let animus swamp her in defeat. When the finest player the game has seen behaves like a diva, it is not wrong to remind her that champions have responsibilities. She is much better than that. And she is not bigger than her sport. Nobody is – including those who sit in judgment.<doc-sep>Serena Williams argues with chair umpire Carlos Ramos during the 2018 US Open women’s singles final against Naomi Osaka of Japan at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Sept. 8 in New York. As Serena Williams faced the media in the bowels of Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday night, every point she attempted to drive home made complete sense. It was unfair for the chair umpire to take away a point, and then a game, toward the end of her eventual loss to 2018 US Open champion Naomi Osaka. Men have long gotten away with abusing chair and line umpires in tennis. She has been an advocate for securing equal rights for female players on tour, and what happened to her during Saturday’s final might eventually change the way female tennis players are treated. It’s easy to agree with the postmatch message. But it was also difficult to embrace the way that message was delivered during the course of her two-set defeat to Osaka, the emerging star of Haitian and Japanese descent who won her first Grand Slam title. What Williams did on center court at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday night was not a good look for her. The best player in the game not long after she turned pro in 1995, Williams has earned the right to vent over a call she felt was undeserved. On the other hand, there are consequences and repercussions for players who continue to cross over the “line in the sand” set by officials. And Williams, who turns 37 in a few weeks, knows she can’t explain away her outburst by placing her chips on the fact that men do it too. And does she really want to establish the standard for young female tennis players by using the behavior of bratty boys as an example? At times, some of the male players on tour have acted like jerks. Novak Djokovic, who won the 2018 US Open on Sunday, had to issue a video apology after an aggressive gesture startled a ball boy working the championship match of the 2015 Miami Open. Nick Kyrgios, from Australia, has earned his bad-boy reputation berating officials, smashing rackets and even appearing to cheat the game by seemingly tanking matches. And we’ve all heard about or seen the childish behavior demonstrated by John McEnroe throughout his 16-year career. In 1990, McEnroe was actually defaulted out in the fourth round of the Australian Open for a prolonged tantrum that was mild by his standards, explaining years later, “I suppose that even though I don’t feel like I should have been defaulted, say, in that particular match, I’m sure there were a few others where I probably deserved to be.” But when it comes to tirades, even Williams doesn’t get a pass. Her complaints during the 2004 US Open were justified, with four horrible calls going against her in crucial moments during a quarterfinal loss to Jennifer Capriati. Five years later, in the semifinals of the 2009 US Open, Williams held up her racket in a menacing manner as she walked toward the lineswoman who called her for a foot fault. Williams threatened to “shove this ball down your (expletive deleted) throat.” The code violation against Williams earned her a point penalty, which ended the match against Kim Clijsters since she was already down match point. So players of every gender in every sport sometimes lose it when calls go against them. Unfortunately, male athletes in tennis are judged by a different criteria from their female counterparts. Their actions are embraced as passion, and often applauded. Williams and the other women on tour — especially women of color — have to be twice as good and half as mad to succeed. It’s a criteria they have to navigate in tennis, and in life. Women have to work harder because their work often falls under more scrutiny. That’s a point that’s driven home with me even more as I listen to the horror stories my daughter often shares with me as she navigates her professional career. It’s her experience that indifferent work from male colleagues gets ignored, while minor missteps by female workers are often treated at DEFCON levels. Williams lost her cool. We get it. And officials are often biased and occasionally hold grudges against athletes they don’t like (former NBA official Joey Crawford once ejected Tim Duncan for laughing as the San Antonio Spurs forward sat on the bench. Crawford was fined $100,000). There’s no proof that chair umpire Carlos Ramos had any bias against Williams. But it happens. Let’s be clear here: The code violation for coaching that set off the entire series of events should have never been called by Ramos. That led to a second code violation, and a point deduction, when Williams smashed a racket after collapsing in a crucial fifth game of the second set (after two double faults hurt her chance to take a 4-1 lead). The third violation, which cost her a game, came after she continued to argue and called Ramos a “thief.” A code violation for calling someone a name? Tennis officials have been called worse. Williams admitted afterward that she had never had a problem with Ramos, who has a reputation in tennis of being strict. Ramos has drawn the ire of Rafael Nadal (issued two warnings for slow play during the 2017 French Open), Andy Murray (issued a code violation during the 2016 Olympics) and Venus Williams (he accused her of receiving coaching during a 2016 French Open match). Ramos owns what’s known in tennis as a “gold badge,” which is supposed to signify the highest achievement among tennis officials. But an umpire at the top of his craft should have, at a crucial moment of a Grand Slam final, recognized the passion that Williams demonstrated after the first code violation. And, like solid officials have done in every sport when confronted by great athletes expressing themselves in the heat of the moment, Ramos should have looked away and ignored her continued complaints. For anyone who wants to offer a defense to Ramos — there is none.<doc-sep>
Naomi Osaka won her maiden grand slam title at the 2018 US Open in what was the most controversial tennis final in living memory. She outplayed Serena Williams with a stunning display of athleticism and powerful shot-making. But the match will be remembered not for its tennis but for the altercation between Williams and the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, which culminated in Williams receiving a game penalty late in the second set. Williams received three code violations from Ramos during the match: one for verbally abusing him, another for abusing her racket, and – crucially – one for receiving coaching from her coach Patrick Mouratoglou who was sitting in the stands. The episode raises two important questions about coaching: should Williams have been penalised for being coached during the match and – more fundamentally – should coaching during a match be an offence in the first place? To receive coaching while on court is categorically forbidden in the rules of grand slam tennis. So, on the face of it, Serena should have no complaint about the code violation. But tennis umpiring is not simply a matter of interpreting the rules and applying them to the facts of the match. Conventions can override the rulebook so that rules are ignored or followed only in a subset of cases in which they apply. After the match, Mouratoglou admitted: “I was coaching … [but Osaka’s] coach was coaching the whole time, too. Everyone is doing it 100% of the time.” If coaching during matches is endemic and rarely punished, it might be suggested that, by convention, coaching is tolerated. This would be similar, for example, to the way that rules regarding the time allowed between points are routinely overlooked by umpires, especially after long points. In occasions when the umpire does raise concerns about coaching, players normally receive an informal warning that, if the coaching continues, they will be penalised formally. Again, this approach is a matter of convention rather than following rules – and again, the convention was not followed during this final. So, Williams might feel aggrieved about the crucial first code violation, because she had a legitimate expectation that anything short of overt coaching would be ignored by the umpire – and even if it were not ignored, she might have expected to receive an informal warning first. On-court controversies But this match brings into sharp relief a fundamental issue that tennis authorities must settle: should the ban on coaching exist at all? This is not the first incident at the 2018 US Open in which coaching was the centre of controversy. The first concerned the match between Andy Murray and Fernando Verdasco, where Murray complained to officials that Verdasco had illegitimately conversed with his coach during an “extreme heat” break. While this US Open has been something of a lightning rod for coaching controversy, the legitimacy of on-court coaching has been an issue that tennis authorities have grappled with for some time. On the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour, players are entitled to call their coach to the court once a set and, for example, during an opponent’s medical timeouts. Meanwhile, the US Open is experimenting with on-court coaching in the qualifying and junior events. At a time when other major sports such as football and rugby have allowed heightened involvement from coaches during competition, shouldn’t tennis follow suit and involve coaches more rather than less? Aside from consistency in the rules, perhaps the strongest argument for allowing on-court coaching in grand slams is the problem of enforcement. On-court coaching is notoriously difficult to identify: who can really distinguish encouragement, which is permitted, from coaching, which is not? And it’s just one more thing for an umpire to have to monitor. But I believe there is a compelling reason against coaching during matches: the introduction of on-court coaching runs counter to one of the fundamental purposes of the sport. EPA-EFE/Jason Szenes Keep your head Sporting competition is designed to challenge competitors’ skills and capacities. Different sports challenge different sets of both. In tennis, one of the capacities most valued is self-reliance – the ability to direct one’s performance in competition unaided by others. Once a player steps on to the match court, she takes sole charge for executing her shots, for adjusting her strategy, for retaining her mental equilibrium, and for pushing herself to her physical limits. The player is her own analyst, psychologist, strategist and drill sergeant. The emphasis on self-reliance is one of the sport’s defining values.