A Call and a Response That Can't Be Defended

FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y.

Usually, Rafael Nadal getting his doors blown off in straight sets -- 2, 2 and 2 in a Grand Slam semifinal -- would be the No. 1 topic of conversation. But not on the day after Serena Williams self-destructed right out of the U.S. Open in the most bizarre episode of her dramatic career.

The skies that opened and dumped all that rain on the National Tennis Center on Friday and Saturday also sucked the order and calm from what remained of the U.S. Open. The final Grand Slam tournament of the year almost always drips drama, but not in a way this ugly and controversial.

Objecting to a lineswoman's foot-fault call against Kim Clijsters Saturday night, a call that put Clijsters at match point, Williams shouted for everyone to hear that she would stuff a tennis ball down the lineswoman's throat and repeatedly waved a racket at the official. That much is indisputable.

Because the lineswoman relayed Williams's remarks to the chair umpire, and because Williams had already earned a code violation warning earlier in the match for smashing her racket, she was assessed a point penalty that handed the match to her opponent. Everything else is up for interpretation and was still being debated Sunday evening, from the expensive souvenir shops scattered about the tennis center to the media center where everybody who cares about tennis seemed to have a strong opinion on what should or shouldn't have happened.

Williams, easily the biggest attraction in women's tennis and a favorite here with the Open crowds, at first said she didn't threaten the lineswoman, then later in the same postmatch interview session said, "I don't remember anymore, to be honest."

The only thing television replays showed was Williams having a Roger Clemens moment. A former player who was on the tour for years and is close to Williams said Sunday morning: "Serena just snapped. I've never seen her do that before. I wondered if she had, like, 25 cups of coffee waiting for the rain to stop and get the match started. She just went off. But that foot fault never should have been called. Never. It wasn't obvious and it's something you just don't call -- not at that juncture of the match."

Okay, let's say the foot-fault call shouldn't have been made. Let's say it's a violation more akin to a ticky-tack foul called in the final five seconds of a tied basketball game than it is a toe barely touching the three-point arc.

Even so, as enraged as Williams understandably was with so much riding on such a call, she sure doesn't get to brandish a racket at an official from six feet. To that there are no exceptions.

If a man (or woman for that matter) came at me with that level of anger waving a racket that close to my face I'd have been out of that little folding chair and into a stance ready to fight. And if the roles were reversed, if some woman came within a few feet of Williams waving a racket, you can best believe she would be ready to defend herself, if not more. You don't get to repeatedly point a racket at somebody and yell that you'll stick the ball down her "[expletive] throat," then a few moments later act like you didn't make a threat.

Yes, it was a threat -- specific, directed and unmistakable.

It was inexcusable when John McEnroe did it all those years and it's inexcusable now when Williams, who counts McEnroe as one of her tennis idols, does it.

Even Richard Williams knew it was a big deal because, as a photographer positioned just below Serena's dad told me, Richard Williams jumped up and began screaming at his daughter (who was at the opposite end of the court and couldn't hear him anyway): "Let it go, Serena! Let it go!"

Opening the ESPN broadcast of the tournament on Sunday, McEnroe said: "Johnny Mac's even been topped! You can't defend the indefensible. I'm not going to condone what happened." McEnroe also sought to provide some context when he said: "You can't call a foot fault there. It's out of the question. It wasn't obvious; it was minuscule. All of it was, in retrospect, ugly."

The preeminent authority when it comes to the history of anything in tennis, ugly included, is columnist Bud Collins, who, as always, is here at the U.S. Open. I asked him Sunday if he'd ever seen behavior any worse than Williams's and Collins said, "No."

The closest he could come up with was McEnroe's sustained outburst at the Australian Open some years ago when Mac pretty much cursed out everybody within earshot and was appropriately tossed. But Williams's heat was trained on one woman, who like anybody with a brain in her head, was justified to feel threatened.

Look, meltdowns are part of sports. Williams's wasn't any more egregious than what we've seen multiple times from baseball's Carl Everett or Earl Weaver back in the day. It wouldn't make a Bob Knight top 10 reel. Novak Djokovic was on the wrong end of an unforgivably wretched call at a pivotal point in the first set with Roger Federer and objected, but Djokovic didn't threaten the chair umpire who made the bad ruling.

Even worse, Williams's loss of composure comes at a time when she had returned to the top spot in women's tennis. The big guns in tennis are Federer, Nadal and Serena Williams. A loss to Clijsters in the semis here doesn't change that.

It's a shame, really, because Juan Martín del Potro deserved to bask in the spotlight by himself for at least a few hours after dismantling Nadal, who, to be fair, was limited by an abdominal injury. Nadal said he fears what was a strain when the tournament began is now a rupture. He doesn't know for sure because he wouldn't be examined out of fear a physician would tell him not to play the U.S. Open, which he considered too important to skip.

"I had to try," Nadal said of coming back from his knee and abdominal injuries.

Del Potro, meanwhile, continues to improve incrementally, whether it's his serve, groundstrokes, confidence coming to the net occasionally, or his movement. At 6 feet 6 he looks so awkward, yet gets everywhere he needs to be in plenty of time. At least del Potro will get another chance to have his shining moment, and this time it'll be unshared when he plays Monday in the championship match, a distinction many of us thought he'd share with Serena Williams.