Sunday, September 09, 2018

Naomi Socks It to Serena



Congratulations to Naomi Osaka for doing something very few people have ever been able to do: beat the greatest player of all time at her own game. (That serve! That power! That precision!) Damian and I saw her play Venus Williams when we were at Wimbledon last year and knew she was the real deal.) What an incredible performance in her first Grand Slam final -- talk about grace under pressure -- can’t wait to see how your career unfolds from here! #astarisborn #herstory


UPDATE:


Everyone has varying feelings about the way the umpire handled yesterday’s U.S. Open final. The only thing that isn’t up for debate is that the attempted coaching, the racket smashing and everything that ensued from there were the result of Serena Williams’s frustration that she was being thoroughly outclassed by Naomi Osaka. The future of tennis has arrived!

5 comments:

James Dwight Williamson said...

HA!

Myron said...

Super excited for her, but ugh -- what a terrible way to win her first grand slam amid so much controversy.

Unknown said...

That’s all you have to say about the match? No doubt Naomi SLAYED and deserves the trophy. But I’m still reeling from how it all unfolded.

Brent said...

Sally Jenkins said it best: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/at-us-open-power-of-serena-williams-and-naomi-osaka-is-overshadowed-by-an-umpires-power-play/2018/09/08/edbf46c8-b3b4-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bf7ba387591c

Lynn said...

This morning I heard the audio from Serena Williams, and it sounded like a repeat of the meltdown in the Clisters match.

In both cases, she was being outplayed by a player she assumed she would be able to handle, and she unraveled (unconsciously, I suspect) to give herself an excuse for losing a match she felt she should have won.

Where it got ridiculous was when she started demanding that the umpire apologize to her. (There’s no way she thought the umpire would actually do that.) And no one was accusing her of cheating. (As her coach pointed out, everyone does it. They just wanted her to tell her coach not to be so obvious.)

Also, in the umpire’s defense, another umpire at the tournament got a lot of flac for treating a player who was melting down with kid gloves. I bet the umpires were subsequently instructed to make everyone obey the rules and treat all of them evenhandedly.

Martina Navratilova has a good piece in The Times on the controversy.