Was Serena having a bad day? Did she and Common get into a fight? Was she channeling her inner Naomi Campbell? Who knows? In 10 years, no one will care what underlying reasons prompted Serena to go off the deep end as they remember her tirade. They’ll just remember that it happened. And that it was awful.

Serena was frustrated: she was losing and she was being outplayed. But is that really a reason to shout profanities at, threaten bodily harm to and physically intimidate the teeny-tiny line judge? And make no mistake, Serena is physically intimidating.

Her ‘hero’, Johnny Mac, was having flashbacks.

“I’m young” said an unapologetic and insulting Serena after the match…ooooo we’ve heard that before in the context of doing stupid things. Who said that? Oh, it was A-Rod.

Just because you’re young doesn’t make it right.

And Serena was building up to this moment the entire tournament. There was the bizarre stare-down in early-round play against Czink. In that match, the line judge caught her ire after calling back an ace for a foot-fault. Serena won the 3rd-round match.

Things did not go as well for her Saturday night.

Serena got a warning for breaking her racquet after she dropped the first set against the resurgent Kim Clijsters. Then, once again tripped up in her own feet, Serena foot-faulted at the line to give Clijsters match point. And this is when the calamity and utter brattiness ensued.

Serena was docked the next point - MATCH POINT! - because of her unsportsmanlike behavior. Game, set, match Clijsters. Justice served.

Um, this is almost like Donovan McNabb not knowing that an NFL football game can end in a tie. Except D-Mac never threatened to kill anyone. Plus, he later admitted that he messed up. Serena’s response after being asked whether she would apologize was… “An apology from me? For…?”

I bet the International Tennis Federation would like to take that little yellow ball and shove it down Serena’s f&*king throat right about now. But why is the governing body of tennis letting her play out her doubles match with her sister? A fine of $10,500 is a drop in the bucket - only a suspension will send the right message. And $500 for, wait for it, RACQUET ABUSE, is a joke.

This was not a semi-humorous McEnroe moment. This was the type of aggression that gets an athlete, any athlete in any sport, kicked out of a game. Serena threw down a ‘the-rules-don’t-apply-to-me’ power play - plain and simple. And potentially, this is the legacy that Serena will leave if she doesn’t reflect and try to undo some of the bad feeling she garnered last night among tennis fans everywhere.

Expect hecklers tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Fantoo Blog Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.