Serena Williams has a meltdown at the US Open - and the rest was expected

TL:DR - The hamster quickly reframed the issue from on-court coaching and code violations into a woman's victim issue, totally throwing out the rulebook. Talk of sollipsism and shaming tactics!

Tennis is one of the best sports you can watch if you want to know what great champions are made of. A lot of masculine lessons can be learnt from it - mental strength, dealing with one emergency after another, what to do when things don't go your way, how to live right on the limit of controlled power and intensity, what separates the greatest from the merely very good, and more. The mind of a player is palpable in a match. It's an individual sport, so you're responsible and can't blame anyone else.

A peculiar thing about tennis is that, even the tiniest percentages in performance make for a very significant difference as seen on court, matches have been lost where the first player had match points and couldn't close it out, and the 2nd fought back. Close matches can be separated by as little as 1 point in 150, and the best players do that extra part consistently better than others.

So tennis is in fact one of the best sports to highlight the differences between men and women, where the 15-20% difference between men's and women's at peak performance (we're comparing the best of both, not the median or mode, otherwise that gap would be a lot bigger) can put them in 2 other universes of performance. Just watch John Isner serving at less than full power against WTA players as an example.

So for a change, I watch the US Open women's final yesterday. Half way through, Serena's coach is accused of coaching during play and the umpire Carlos Ramos gives her a code violation for receiving coaching during the match (her coach actually admitted to it btw and hamstered that 'everyone does it' - so this wasn't just pulled out of the umpire's ass). Later on she got another penalty for racket abuse as well and finally a 3rd one that cost her a game for yet another spat. As per the rules, a second violation gives you a point penalty and a 3rd consecutive one gives a game penalty. A 4th (which didn't happen) is disqualification from the match.

Just open up Youtube and see for yourself what happened after the 2nd penalty.

She went nuclear, basically accused the chair umpire of insulting her character (projection), calling him sexist, a liar, a thief, partial to men doing worse things (nope, I've been watching men's tennis, and even Nick Kyrgios isn't this bad, and yes men do get penalized).

She makes it into an issue of her being a woman and being black and what not, threatens the umpire that she'll ruin his career and that he owes her an apology. Eventually when everything failed, she starts the waterworks - makes it all about discrimination and victimhood (the ego loves victimhood, it's the hamster's best weapon), that she's a mother and has a daughter, wow. And when it was all over she claimed that she'll continue fighting for equality.

“I just feel like the fact that I have to go through this is just an example for the next person that has emotions, and that want to express themselves, and want to be a strong woman. They’re going to be allowed to do that because of today,” Williams said. “Maybe it didn’t work out for me, but it’s going to work out for the next person.” -- that's what the issue of on court coaching finally got re-framed into.

She also melted down in 2009 after the umpire gave her a double fault for stepping over the line while serving, and was disqualified for threatening the line judge.

Men usually argue with line calls, late challenges, time violations on serve, medical timeouts, illogical decisions and things related to the game. Usually men smash rackets (like Baghdatis, Dimitrov, Safin, and Paire smashed all their spare rackets and forfeited - and for some reason it actually becomes hilarious when overdone).

Women however, always make it about them (sollipsism) and their victim cards.

You know what's worse than this? Check out the twitter reactions. Google highlights these in my search results specifically. The hamsters are unbelievable.

"... Serena Williams didn't have a meltdown. She defended her honor on one of the grandest stages in a sport she's dominated for her entire adult life that continually disrespects her. Don't reduce her justified frustration to sexist behavioral stereotypes ..."

"... (2/2) When a woman is emotional, she’s “hysterical” and she’s penalized for it. When a man does the same, he’s “outspoken” & and there are no repercussions. Thank you, @serenawilliams, for calling out this double standard. More voices are needed to do the same..."

"...The hypocrisy of the umpire to penalize @serenawilliams in a sport that celebrated the antics of John McEnroe and Ilie Nastace is a blatant display of sexism #usopen..." - seriously just how does this shit pass muster?

McEnroe has been disqualified from matches and penalized numerous times. David Nalbandian was disqualified for kicking a line judge (unintentionally yes, but he apologized). Even Federer has been booed for breaking a racket. Andy Murray has melted down a lot until 2016, and he's been plastered for it. Djokovic would have nearly been disqualified from the French open in 2016 (which he eventually won) as his racket came within inches of hitting a line judge. The thing is that the men are aware enough not to get 3 code violations (which results in a game loss).

The worst meltdown I've ever seen was when Victor Troicki went mental over whether or not the ball fell on the line (and even there it wasn't as personal - there was no Hawkeye and it turned out he was right). Safin holds a world record, having smashed nearly a thousand rackets (it sounds funny now though). Hot head Fabio Fognini was kicked out of the US open in 2017 with a $24,000 fine for verbally abusing an umpire (a woman in fact), and lost all his prize money (over $72000) and points as well, and was hit with a 2 grand slam ban (ouch!) - but he apologized later and accepted he'd behaved unacceptably. Nadal is one player who never melts down - he hasn't even broken a racket till date.

However, regardless of what google says, at least Youtube commenters have more sense. The thing here however, is that google search results are becoming biased now. As if the media wasn't enough.

Meanwhile, Osaka, the winner, was reduced to tears at the end despite having won her first grand slam. Well, she's Japanese and shows conventional femininity. The crowd didn't treat her well, and she's not a Djokovic that she can just shrug it off with stoicism.

The umpire, Carlos Ramos, who's officiated both the men's and women's matches at all 4 grand slams, kept frame throughout, didn't say much about it, but admitted he stayed indoors for a few days for his own safety. And he didn't get a shred support from anyone, zero. Well, now they've apologized to him, but the whole apology thing was 'hush-hush', behind closed doors, nowhere near the publicity level of the comments made to him.

So typical isn't it...AWALT! The umpire argued with a strong independent woman, and the result was spectacular.

And the man got absolutely no support nor sympathy, was called names regardless of his standing and was essentially left to fend for himself. Even the apology wasn't made in public.

And before we say double standards, it takes 3 code violations in a row to be docked a game penalty. If this wasn't Serena's 3rd violation in a row, it wouldn't have happened. So much for rules. Once emotions are involved, women throw out the rule book.

It also serves to prove a point that I first came across in a "A billion wicked thoughts". Women with higher testosterone can often act more masculine and outdo other women, but this also turns them into AWALT on steroids, boosting all their feminine behaviours as well. The result is volatile. I have an aunt who I swear must belong to this category. It's like that girl inside is bottled up and comes out explosively.

And the worst part about tennis isn't even this incident. It's the fact that women get equal pay for playing 3 set matches matches that are shorter than the entire 4th set between Dominic Thiem and Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinal. In fact if I was being truly fair, I say that the fact women don't play 5 set matches means you never see the legendary battles and comebacks that you see in men's tennis, which are on a whole other category of epic and that's the real problem with women's tennis - there are no epic matches. The days of Graf's generation are long gone. Even technically the men are far superior to the women right now as well.

Maria Sharapova or Billie Jean King came up with a shit test that men also need to play only 3 sets in Grand Slams when asked about it, and it doesn't take a genius to understand that this would completely pull down the sport and make grand slams irrelevant. I think BJK even claimed that the AO final between Djokovic and Nadal took a year off their careers -- well, they're still playing at the top. That is what female egalitarianism does to societies in the long run.

I don't hate women players -- I just wanted to point out that AWALT is an inescapable reality despite what an egalitarian society popularly likes to believe in, if anything, in today's climate it's gotten worse. This incident became a good example of what happens when you start arguing with a woman - the issue of on court coaching aside, it very quickly veered off that, descended into shaming tactics, got real personal and another reason to claim victimhood, sexism, etc. And it's very good mileage for the media. This instant ability to reframe an event into victimhood is an excellent tactic, one that totally took the focus away from being a sporting event and into a women's issue and also totally took the focus away from her opponent, who won.

In consolation, there's the men's final between Djokovic and Del Potro tomorrow, and I am sure I will not be disappointed.

EDIT : And it was an excellent final - that 2nd set was longer than the entire women's final! Djokovic is back, and now he's on par with Pete Sampras. He's equivalent to playing against a wall on the other side now that can also attack, with inhuman flexibility and defense - but I wonder when the crowd will ever start to like him.

The only problem with that match? My SJW friend (a girl) posts about Del Potro crying and says "It's ok for men to cry" ... and a bunch of guys totally approve, one even admitting how he's mastered the waterworks. I wrote "Bullcrap" - no reply yet. Society now has gone beyond 'feminine correct' -- it now believes that feminine expressions are the only ones in existence at all.

EDIT : As it turns out, the statistics reveal a completely different story altogether - men players are penalized 3 times as much as women, and outnumber women 8x in the racket smashing department, but in the coaching department, women are penalized twice as much!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2018/09/13/carlos-ramos-returns-chair-serena-williams-row-statistics-back/

That's more proof of the reality of RP human behaviour right there.

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PS : Guys, Serena Williams' husband is the co-founder of reddit... just hope this doesn't get TRP shut down.