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Message: [QUOTE="MadDogRevival, post: 2839099, member: 8028"] maaah. I've always said Serena is a great athlete and the best woman tennis player of all time - was saying that a few years ago. I don't know enough about the "coaches always coach" claim by Serena's coach to have an opinion on whether it was out of line, but . . . this umpire has been around a long time and has had issues with other players. Nadal, Djoker, Venus, all of them. The guy is a known "stickler" and has been accused of inserting himself into matches. Venus was accused by him of receiving coaching during a match. So . . . Serena certainly knew all this and could easily have seen where it was going. Multiple warnings, she called him a thief, she broke her racket . . . . Serena put the focus on the umpire because she was in trouble, and she knew it. She was blown out in the 1st set 6-2. She has lost 4 of her last 6 major finals. In the 4 losses, she lost the first set. Three of those were 2 set matches. In the two wins, she won the first set, and they were 2 set matches. To say that Serena was coming back or was knocked off her game by the ref seems like scapegoating by the goat. She was hammered in the first set and lost 6-2. She was up 3-1 in the 2nd set after getting her only break of the match, then Osaka broke her, causing her to smash her racket - the score is 3-2 Williams at that point. Osaka holds serve. 3-3. Osaka breaks Williams to go up 4-3. At this point, Serena is being buried, has just lost 3 straight games, and Osaka is serving. At this point Serena decides to call the Ref a thief and berate him. Serena screwed up. She was losing and she knew she was going down. Instead of losing gracefully, she chose to focus attention on the Ref and essentially force his hand. Not a nice thing to do to Osaka, who deserved the win and the glory. But hey, she's the GOAT because of her competitiveness, and she's earned the right to go off the rails. McEnroe was unbearable. As for the "men get away with this thing"? Yeah, that's like Kevin Spacey playing the gay card when he was accused of sexually assaulting a minor - a huge red herring. She's been playing professional tennis for 20 years. Complaining about gender inequality from the refs when she was clearly going down was disrespectful to Osaka. And hey, you make the same money as the men while putting in 60% of the effort on the court, so quit crying. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach