Osaka Beats Serena
Serena Williams’ Anger Toward Chair Umpire On Display
Serena Williams loses the U.S. Open championship to Naomi Osaka during controversial final.
NEW YORK — Naomi Osaka defeated her hero Serena Williams, 6-2. 6-4, to win the U.S. Open on Saturday, the first major title of the 20-year-old’s career. But this was not the fairy-tale moment Osaka had worked toward.
Williams, attempting to tie the record with her 24th Grand Slam title, was levied a game penalty in the second set during a shocking display of anger directed at the match’s umpire.
Emotion first bubbled up at 1-1 in the second set, when Williams exchanged words with chair umpire Carlos Ramos. Ramos had assessed Williams a coaching violation after her longtime coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, motioned from the player’s box that Williams should go to the net more often. Williams, 36, disputed the violation and then told Ramos that she is not a cheater.
Williams was apparently under the impression that Ramos had taken back the violation, but he had not.
The six-time U.S. Open champion received another code
violation four games later, leading 3-2 in the second set. Osaka had just broken her serve, and Williams smashed her racket into the court so hard that it broke. Ramos assessed her a point penalty as under WTA and Grand Slam rules it was the second code violation of the match.
Williams and Osaka played two more games, then during the changeover with Osaka leading 4-3, Williams spoke with Ramos again, demanding an apology for “stealing” a point from her.
“You owe me an apology,” Williams said. “I have never cheated in my life.”
She called Ramos a thief, and he assessed her a third code violation for verbal abuse, resulting in a game penalty that put Osaka up 5-3 and one game from the championship.
In response, Williams grew more emotional and said she was being treated differently from male players who, she argued, get away with much harsher language and behavior on court.
Osaka won the match quickly after that, a bittersweet ending to a battle she had been fighting admirably against her idol. Osaka, especially in the first set, hit harder and bigger against Williams, in the face of a star-studded crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium that was wholly against her.
Williams was attempting to win her 24th Grand Slam title to tie the record set 45 years ago to the day by Margaret Court at the U.S. Open. In another bit of coincidence, Sept. 8 was also the day Althea Gibson became the first black player to win the singles title at the tournament’s predecessor, the U.S. Championships, in 1957.
Williams, 36, was also trying to break Chris Evert’s record of six U.S. Open singles titles.
Osaka, 20, was making her debut in a Grand Slam final. Not since 18-year-old Monica Seles defeated 35-year-old Martina Navratilova in the 1991 U.S. Open final has there been such an age gap between finalists.
Osaka, of Haitian-Japanese ancestry, was the youngest woman to reach the final at Flushing Meadows since Caroline Wozniacki did it as a 19-year-old in 2009.
The post-match ceremony was the most uncomfortable in memory at the U.S. Open. Williams held her face in a forced, closed-lipped smile as tears ran down Osaka’s cheeks while U.S. Tennis Association President Katrina Adams spoke.
“Naomi, welcome to the big stage. Serena, welcome back,” Adams said as the crowd booed.