Serena

I'm not actually a fan of Serena, when your favourite player of all time is Justine Henin you tend not to be.

I wanted Osaka to win but I also wanted a good match and the umpire got in the way of that and treated Serena unfairly.

Whilst I can see this is more about Serena than sexism per se, she is demanding the right to be treated in the same manner as if her behaviour was exhibited by a male Tennis Player. i.e. If they can be aggressive A+++++++’s to the Umpire, then so can she.

At the same time in her rant she did reference being a mother and the high standards that implies. We often hear calls for more feminine virtues to be adopted in society and these are normally considered to involve less overt aggression.

I still feel we are working our way towards some kind of better balance in society, but it’s hard to know if this ugly incident helps or not. As so often it seems to divide us down the lines we normally lean to.

Take Serena’s explosion out of this discussion and it’s easy to see a lack of consistency of treatment (including the fact that star names and finals get more lenient treatment) by the Authorities, is plainly wrong. Particularly as they can plan and should not be acting in the heat of the moment.

The whole thing is one big mess, but the Game has the responsibility to look at this before the next aging Diva (Sic) has a moment.

I was really surprised to see the reaction on Twitter to this, as I watched the whole thing live and I felt it was clear that Serena was evidently at fault.

Carlos Ramos is a notoriously strict umpire, this has always been the case. Rafael Nadal moaned about him in an interview last year after he was given two official warnings for slow play, something very few umpires enforce but Carlos always does. There is more than enough evidence to suggest that he penalises male players just as badly as he does female ones, yes he's a bit of a knob, but he's a knob universally.

Whether Serena saw her coach signalling to her or not, a member of her team was breaking the rules, so she was rightly warned for it. If she was angry, she should have taken it out on her coach, who later admitted he had done the very thing she was warned for. Throwing a temper tantrum and breaking your racket before shouting personal abuse at the umpire is crappy behaviour regardless of whether it comes from a man or a woman, Serena is not making a groundbreaking heroic stand against sexism by insisting that she should be allowed to throw tantrums on the court with impunity. It is true that in many instances women get a rougher time of it than men (there was the whole debacle earlier on in the tournament about a woman changing her top during the game) but honestly, if you want to protest unequal treatment by umpires, bring it up in a press conference, or better still, wait until you are ACTUALLY being discriminated against. If your entire stance is "hey, isn't it unfair that I acted like a Tw*t and got punished accordingly" it's probably not a great position to have.

I actually was really angry at the end of the match when I saw Naomi in tears and the crowd booing. I know they weren't booing her but imagine winning your first grand slam title, being the first person from your country ever to win one in fact, only to have your opponent overshadow your win by deliberately being an asshole. I used to have the utmost respect for Serena as she is one of the few women who has managed to make a women's sport as popular as the men's equivalent, but this really made her go down in my estimations.

Yes, I’d say the US Open crowds in general are worse. The capacity is so huge on the Arthur Ashe court it’s almost pointless being sat all the way up at the back. Wimbledon Centre Court gets a pretty decent view everywhere.

Still, I’ll never forget my all time fav Wimbledon year of 2001. It was the year Ivanisevic won, and pretty much every men’s match from the fourth round onwards was an epic, memorable battle. Some people still love to go on about how Henman would have beaten Ivanisevic in the SF if it wasn’t for rain delays, only completely forgetting that he’d have easily been out in the fourth round against Todd Martin for the same reason, as well as the horrendous crowd batting for Martin’s demise with every point.

Come on Tim