..besides the fact that she has the physique of a double-decker bus, the cooth and manners of a drunken Essex Chav on a Friday night, and the grace and poise of a pregnant walrus, it's her over-active mouth and her latest outburst in a grand-slam tournament match that should result in her being banned from the game forever.
I grew up in an era where a long icy stare at the chair umpire with your hands on your hips was thought to be skirting the edge of protocol, so when John McEnroe came along, the tennis world was literally thrown on its ear. In major tournaments around the globe, young tennis fans received vocabulary lessons that would normally only have been learned by sneaking a listen to Billy Connolly or Richard Pryor records, you know, the ones your parents hid behind the 'Abba - Greatest Hit Compilation' LP, thinking you wouldn't know where to look. McEnroe used heretofore un-uttered nouns and verbs on a tennis court in a myriad of interesting hues and conjugations (mostly deep blue) that shocked the tennis establishment to it's very core. Sure he used some colourful language, sure he said some nasty things, and sure he paid a price for it, but not once did he threaten an umpire or line judge with physical violence.
In Serena William's temper-tantrum in 2009 however, she did just that. She threatened a line judge with physical violence after disagreeing with a line call. Not only did she do it in a public place where people could hear her, it was captured in full colour and surround-sound for all to digest. So what did Serena do? Did she publicly apologize for her disgraceful behaviour and commit to acting more professionally in the future? Fuck no. She denied she said anything wrong and tried to laugh it off saying she 'couldn't remember what she may or may not have said in the heat of the moment'. Flash forward to last night, and once again Serena Williams publicly lost her fucking mind and went all 'Gangsta-Bitch' on the Chair Ump who had the audicity to penalize her for her verbal abuse of her opponent. Again, what she said was recorded in glorious colour and sound, for all to see and play again and again, and yet once more, Serena played the 'I don't remember what I said' game as though we were all just a bunch of stupid children that could be fooled over and over again with her simplistic ruse.
Well sorry Hon, but in your vernacular, Homey don't play dat...
You see, what we have now is a clear pattern, a series of events that all look remarkably alike. You play in a high-profile event, you get a call you don't like, you lose your rag, you hurl verbal abuse at the people you deem to have wronged you, and then when shown incontrovertable evidence of your wrong-doing you claim ignorance due to some sort of 'athletic-amnesia' known only to you. You know what us non-athletes call that? We call it "bullshit". If we behaved that way, either publicly or at our workplaces we would be in some serious shit, and if you aren't thrown out of the game and/or fined heavily enough for it to actually be a punishment for this latest petulant, unprofessioanl and borderline criminal outburst, then that will be an even bigger pile of bullshit.
*UPDATE. The U.S. Open fined Serena $2000 whole dollars for her outburst. I am sure that will put a massive dent in the $1.4 million she earned at the tournament and that she will bear that in mind in the future....
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