Sports Then and Now

Tennis Thief Carlos Ramos.

Sports officials have been doing their collective best to ruin sports, ensure they are part of the show and occasionally thrust themselves into the outcome of a contest for years, but tennis umpire Carlos Ramos has now taken that self-indulgence to an unprecedented level by stealing the opportunity for a competitor to fairly compete for a title at the 2018 U.S. Open Women’s Final.

Naomi Osaka played a great match to win the women’s tennis U.S. Open, but there is no doubt that Carlos Ramos stole the chance for Serena Williams to win her 24th Grand Slam by deciding he was bigger than the players or the match.

Early in the second set he gave a penalty to the coach of Serena Williams, Patrick Mouratoglou, for what he called coaching during the match. While Mouratoglou admitted after the match that he was coaching, he also said that he and every coach does some type of coaching during every match. That was acknowledged by Chrissie Evert during her commentary.

Williams, however, insisted that she was not cheating and Mouratoglou said after the match that he was pretty sure that Serena didn’t see him.

Later in the set, after having finally broken Osaka and then being broken back twice, Williams broke her racket in frustration.

Because of the previous violation, Serena received a second conduct warning, which resulted in the loss of a point in a game that Osaka won by love.

At the next break, Serena was still frustrated and multiple times asked the umpire to apologize to her for what she considered calling her a cheater. As he kept refusing to acknowledge any culpability, Serena said that he stole a point from her and then called the official a thief, which seems to be pretty accurate. Just to be clear, she did not cuss at him or use any abusive words.

Showing that he was determined to make this match about him, Ramos called a third conduct penalty on Serena, which he knew when he was doing it would result in a game penalty and basically end the chance for Serena to win the match because it took away a chance for Williams to break Osaka and brought her within one game of losing the match.

As an experienced official with previous grand slam experience both on the men’s and women’s side, Ramos should have known that this was the time for him to show restraint and understand that athletes in those situations are playing with great emotion and adrenaline and if they are not using abusive language should receive restraint from someone in his position. Evert and the other ESPN commentators after the match suggested that Ramos should have spoken with Williams and told her she needed to stop what he considered to be an aggressive tone or he would give her a misconduct penalty. Read the rest of this entry →