By Claire Cheek, Hannah Quiroz, and Ellen Nilsson
“Answer the question. The question, jerk!”
This token phrase came from none other than tennis legend John McEnroe. During the Swedish Open in 1984, number one ranked tennis player John McEnroe threw yet another infamous temper tantrum during a match. Frustrated with decisions made by the umpire, he launched a ball at the viewers and received only a warning. Then, after missing a serve, he used his racket to destroy an entire water station. Astonished by the outburst, his opponent Anders Jarryd describes his reaction:
McEnroe finally received a violation which cost him one point, yet this does not compare to the three code violations Serena Williams received in September 2018 at the US Open. Williams, hungry for her first grand slam victory after giving birth, was looking to tie the record for the most grand slam singles tournament wins in tennis history while Naomi Osaka was looking for her first win. However, the match proved itself to be monumental for different reasons. In the first game, chair umpire Carlos Ramos saw Williams’ coach making hand gestures towards Serena. He penalized her for illegal coaching. Then he further penalized her for breaking her racquet. She confronted Ramos, arguing that he was attacking her character. She said,
With yet another code violation on its way, Williams reacted by calling Ramos a “thief.” A second code violation is an automatic point deduction, but since Williams felt the violations were unfair she accused Ramos of stealing a point from her. With tensions rising, tournament referee Brian Early approached the court. Hearing Williams defend herself, he penalized her for accusatory and hostile language, and he caused her to lose the game.
Williams didn’t destroy public property. Williams didn’t attack the audience. Williams did not walk off the court in frustration. Williams was, however, fined $17,000 for her behavior during the match. Both McEnroe and Williams are tennis superstars, yet McEnroe was not portrayed by media outlets as hysterical and reactionary. He faced drastically fewer consequences because he is a white man.
Williams, a black woman in a historically white male dominated sport, has faced racial and gendered discrimination throughout much of her career. Her race and gender not only affect how she is treated on the court but have even resulted in negative depictions of her by media outlets. When understanding this controversy, one must look at the history of past injustices that have plagued Williams’ tennis career. Williams has often been berated for her “unfair” physical advantage by her opponents, especially by Maria Sharapova, her main rival who was just suspended for taking performance enhancing drugs. When it comes to drug screening tests, Williams was tested five times this year, while white female tennis players were only tested once or twice, resulting in her tweet saying
Discrimination based on her physical attributes are apparent online when googling images of Williams. The pictures portray her as angry, frustrated, and intense. Images of Sharapova are just the opposite; she is smiling, posing, and modeling. Media outlets have warped Williams into an aggressive villain through the power of image.
It doesn’t end there. After the match, Australian news outlet The Herald Sun released this cartoon of Williams that ridicules her physical features. The cartoon draws extreme attention to her overdrawn lips, aggressive cheekbones, and thick muscles, while her opponent is depicted as blonde and petite. It bears a strikingly obvious resemblance to dehumanizing Jim Crow imagery.
Whether Williams behaved appropriately or not, the media and tennis community have set forth clear racial biases against her. Williams’ outburst at the US Open has brought light to the structural biases of the sport. Historically, tennis has been a predominantly white and male game. Tennis is often seen as a sport fit for kings, the sport of country club go-ers, the sport of the wealthy. Williams has shattered the image that persisted for much of tennis’s history. She has challenged the traditional racial and gender barrier, and continually faces discrimination for it. This requires more than a rethinking of how the sport treats individual players. If bias is to be addressed, it requires a complete overhaul of how the game is played. Violations are few and far between since it is often left to the umpire’s discretion. Although tennis was first officially recognized in 1877 and the official rules and regulations were written in 1924, tennis has not seen much change since then. These official codes were written when the sport consisted strictly of white men. If the rules haven’t seen change in over 90 years while the sport itself has seen an influx of POC and female players, can it possibly be fair for players who don’t fit into the original mold of a tennis player? Bias is sure to be expected when rules were exclusive to white males. Implicit biases weren’t an issue when umpires had to distinguish between two white men’s play. Now that the sport is more diverse it is time to take a long, hard look at tennis’s structural biases.
Claire Cheek, Hannah Quiroz, and Ellen Nilsson are students in English 291: What Is Racial Difference?