NonP
Legend
With respect to the Gamegate(?) from the women's USO final. Posted this earlier in another forum (don't ask) and frankly thought it too good to be buried among the deluge of hyperventilating rigmarole where it's no doubt headed, so here it is. (Consider that my way of filing it under the "Former Pro" banner. I shudder to think what the crazies next door have been saying about the flare-up in "General Pro.") Slight modifications were made where appropriate:
Guess I should chime in to debunk a common refrain that keeps popping up everywhere, namely that the amount of crap a McEnroe or Connors was allowed to get away with proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the double standards in rules enforcement for men vs. women in tennis. So here's the bottom line: yes, Mac and Jimbo did usually get little more than a slap on the wrist for their outrageous behavior, but no, that's not quite the smoking gun far too many know-nothing pundits wish it is.
Many of you may be at least vaguely aware that tennis became "open" in 1968, when Roland Garros (French Open) opened its gates to professionals and amateurs alike - thereby ending the previous era of shamateurism where the latter players were barred from joining the former but routinely paid under the table to the surprise of practically no one. (The very 1st Open tournament was actually Bournemouth in April 1968, but I digress.) What most of you probably don't know is that the first 2-3 decades of Open tennis were a particularly chaotic era, a veritable Wild Wild West with competing circuits - as many as four(!) on the men's tour in 1973, and the ATP and the WTA weren't formed until 1972 and 1973 respectively - which all but precluded standardization of tour formats and rules across the board. In fact it wasn't until 1990 that the ATP launched its own tour that replaced its previous hydra-headed incarnations, and even then there was further tweaking to do till the late '90s/early '00s, when the ATP became the all-encompassing men's tour as we know it today. (The four GS events are still organized by the ITF.)
Long story short: you cannot compare the kind of standardized officiating you see today with the seeming anarchy and permissive culture of yesterday especially on the men's tour as umpires literally weren't playing by the same book back then, and I guarantee you there's no way the likes of Mac and Jimbo would be able to survive the daily grind of today's more corporate environment unscathed with their tomfoolery and invective of yore. Indeed it's no coincidence that Mac was defaulted at the '90 Australian Open where a new Code of Conduct had just been introduced, which of course has been glossed over in virtually all the pro-Serena narratives.
Now there's an argument to be had over whether this standardization of tennis was such a good thing. Wild as the beginning of the Open Era was, the feverish infusion of capital and the competing forces of interest saw the rise of many household names - the legendary trinity of Connors, Borg and McEnroe followed by Lendl, Wilander, Becker and Edberg who themselves paved the way for a new American renaissance spearheaded by Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Chang along with more international representation - and such disparate exponents as classic serve-and-volleyers (Newcombe to an extent, Gerulaitis, Cash, Edberg), specialized net rushers for clay (Panatta, Noah), various types of baseliners (Lendl, Vilas, Wilander, too many to name), genuine all-courters (Becker, Sampras, Stich) and oddities (Gilbert, Santoro) that lent the game much-welcome variety. And who could forget the storied Navratilova-Evert rivalry, arguably the greatest ever of any gender, or the near mythical Graf-Seles which might well have replaced its predecessor if not for a deranged fanatic whose name remains infamous in tennis lore? It's quite possible the '80s/early to mid-'90s were the single richest span in all of tennis history, and we have the messy experimentation of the early Open Era to thank for it.
Alas we don't have much of this variety today. The corporatization of the ATP/WTA meant that efficiency took precedence over anything else, which in turn led to more tennis factories touting the tried-and-true over risky ventures and churning out one baseline clone after another that continues to underwhelm in both results and audience engagement. For all the talk about the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic trio being the greatest Big 3 ever and Serena's unique place in the sport it's no longer arguable that they have not inspired the younger generations as much as the pundits expected. (I'd actually go so far as to argue that this generation at least among men is the worst field I've seen in my lifetime, but that's for another time and place.)
That's the part about today's tennis I won't miss. But what I also don't miss are the outrageous on-court behavior of yesterday's Connors or McEnroe (let alone Pancho Gonzalez's infamous explosions which make his successors' antics tame by comparison) and the anything-goes culture that enabled it. (Though I'll give a shout-out to Jimbo calling chair umpire David Littlefield "an abortion," probably my all-time "favorite" insult at least in sports.) Now you may not be surprised to hear that many longtime tennis fans don't hide their nostalgia for this very kind of behavior which to them is part of the same freewheeling coin that made the whole rock era of tennis possible, warts and all. If this reasoning sounds familiar to you, that's because it's the same brand of flippant logic anti-PC agitators love to deploy against the left/Democrats/SJWs/BLM/#MeToo/fill-in-the-blank in favor of the "good old days" when people weren't so uptight and prudish.
So chew on that before you keep defending Serena's indefensible behavior in the women's final. Again nothing Ramos did that afternoon remotely justifies the attacks she made on his person. You could say he should've made it clear that it was because of her coach rather than herself that he gave her a warning, or that she insulted him in a childish fit rather than out of pure malice, or what have you, but that still doesn't make it right! And as others have pointed out she has done Osaka a big disfavor by refusing to accept her share of the blame during the post-match presser. After all if you insist that you were unfairly docked a game what does that make your opponent's victory?
There are legit areas to take issue with in tennis (including, like I said earlier, equal pay), and maybe umpires do penalize women more disproportionately than men, but ganging up on Ramos for doing his job last Saturday isn't the best way to go about it, especially given his well-deserved reputation as a stickler. For that analysis you need a far larger sample size than one or two hand-picked examples that you wish validate your agenda, especially when it turns out you're not even making an apples-to-apples comparison as far too many armchair critics and journos are wont with respect to Serena vs. Jimbo/Mac.
Guess I should chime in to debunk a common refrain that keeps popping up everywhere, namely that the amount of crap a McEnroe or Connors was allowed to get away with proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the double standards in rules enforcement for men vs. women in tennis. So here's the bottom line: yes, Mac and Jimbo did usually get little more than a slap on the wrist for their outrageous behavior, but no, that's not quite the smoking gun far too many know-nothing pundits wish it is.
Many of you may be at least vaguely aware that tennis became "open" in 1968, when Roland Garros (French Open) opened its gates to professionals and amateurs alike - thereby ending the previous era of shamateurism where the latter players were barred from joining the former but routinely paid under the table to the surprise of practically no one. (The very 1st Open tournament was actually Bournemouth in April 1968, but I digress.) What most of you probably don't know is that the first 2-3 decades of Open tennis were a particularly chaotic era, a veritable Wild Wild West with competing circuits - as many as four(!) on the men's tour in 1973, and the ATP and the WTA weren't formed until 1972 and 1973 respectively - which all but precluded standardization of tour formats and rules across the board. In fact it wasn't until 1990 that the ATP launched its own tour that replaced its previous hydra-headed incarnations, and even then there was further tweaking to do till the late '90s/early '00s, when the ATP became the all-encompassing men's tour as we know it today. (The four GS events are still organized by the ITF.)
Long story short: you cannot compare the kind of standardized officiating you see today with the seeming anarchy and permissive culture of yesterday especially on the men's tour as umpires literally weren't playing by the same book back then, and I guarantee you there's no way the likes of Mac and Jimbo would be able to survive the daily grind of today's more corporate environment unscathed with their tomfoolery and invective of yore. Indeed it's no coincidence that Mac was defaulted at the '90 Australian Open where a new Code of Conduct had just been introduced, which of course has been glossed over in virtually all the pro-Serena narratives.
Now there's an argument to be had over whether this standardization of tennis was such a good thing. Wild as the beginning of the Open Era was, the feverish infusion of capital and the competing forces of interest saw the rise of many household names - the legendary trinity of Connors, Borg and McEnroe followed by Lendl, Wilander, Becker and Edberg who themselves paved the way for a new American renaissance spearheaded by Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Chang along with more international representation - and such disparate exponents as classic serve-and-volleyers (Newcombe to an extent, Gerulaitis, Cash, Edberg), specialized net rushers for clay (Panatta, Noah), various types of baseliners (Lendl, Vilas, Wilander, too many to name), genuine all-courters (Becker, Sampras, Stich) and oddities (Gilbert, Santoro) that lent the game much-welcome variety. And who could forget the storied Navratilova-Evert rivalry, arguably the greatest ever of any gender, or the near mythical Graf-Seles which might well have replaced its predecessor if not for a deranged fanatic whose name remains infamous in tennis lore? It's quite possible the '80s/early to mid-'90s were the single richest span in all of tennis history, and we have the messy experimentation of the early Open Era to thank for it.
Alas we don't have much of this variety today. The corporatization of the ATP/WTA meant that efficiency took precedence over anything else, which in turn led to more tennis factories touting the tried-and-true over risky ventures and churning out one baseline clone after another that continues to underwhelm in both results and audience engagement. For all the talk about the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic trio being the greatest Big 3 ever and Serena's unique place in the sport it's no longer arguable that they have not inspired the younger generations as much as the pundits expected. (I'd actually go so far as to argue that this generation at least among men is the worst field I've seen in my lifetime, but that's for another time and place.)
That's the part about today's tennis I won't miss. But what I also don't miss are the outrageous on-court behavior of yesterday's Connors or McEnroe (let alone Pancho Gonzalez's infamous explosions which make his successors' antics tame by comparison) and the anything-goes culture that enabled it. (Though I'll give a shout-out to Jimbo calling chair umpire David Littlefield "an abortion," probably my all-time "favorite" insult at least in sports.) Now you may not be surprised to hear that many longtime tennis fans don't hide their nostalgia for this very kind of behavior which to them is part of the same freewheeling coin that made the whole rock era of tennis possible, warts and all. If this reasoning sounds familiar to you, that's because it's the same brand of flippant logic anti-PC agitators love to deploy against the left/Democrats/SJWs/BLM/#MeToo/fill-in-the-blank in favor of the "good old days" when people weren't so uptight and prudish.
So chew on that before you keep defending Serena's indefensible behavior in the women's final. Again nothing Ramos did that afternoon remotely justifies the attacks she made on his person. You could say he should've made it clear that it was because of her coach rather than herself that he gave her a warning, or that she insulted him in a childish fit rather than out of pure malice, or what have you, but that still doesn't make it right! And as others have pointed out she has done Osaka a big disfavor by refusing to accept her share of the blame during the post-match presser. After all if you insist that you were unfairly docked a game what does that make your opponent's victory?
There are legit areas to take issue with in tennis (including, like I said earlier, equal pay), and maybe umpires do penalize women more disproportionately than men, but ganging up on Ramos for doing his job last Saturday isn't the best way to go about it, especially given his well-deserved reputation as a stickler. For that analysis you need a far larger sample size than one or two hand-picked examples that you wish validate your agenda, especially when it turns out you're not even making an apples-to-apples comparison as far too many armchair critics and journos are wont with respect to Serena vs. Jimbo/Mac.
