Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Headline from Tennis.com: "Roddick Berates Chair Umpire"....Riiight



Serena Williams' incident at the US Open may have been extremely uncalled for, but does that mean that from now on, having a word with the chair ump and maybe saying a few not-so-nice things is a huge deal?

Clearly, the tennis world is still effected by the "Serena Tirade", because Andy Roddick simply questioned umpire Fergus Murphy's call on match point (and let me point out it was sooooo not a big deal) and tennis.com still went bat-shit crazy on him and titled their article "Roddick Berates Chair Umpire".

Puhhhhlease.

If this is berating, than the fines will be tossed out like wedding bouquets at this year's Aussie Open. Players have always had their choice words for the umps, but it's not fair to put these actions under microscopes simply because one instance got completely out of hand and is regarded as the biggest sporting freak-out ever. Give the punishments where they are due.

Roddick's words for Murphy were: "I'm standing there with my racket back -don't you think I'm going to ... hit it?'' yelled A-Rod, when a challenge by Tomaz Bellucci was successful, taking the match point away from Roddick. "It's not your job to predict if I'm going to hit it. It's your job to decide if I could hit it. (expletive)"

Roddick later tweeted an apology, saying "Apologies for the language today folks hopefully most kids were asleep by the time I went off ...... my bad."

This is not even in the same ballpark as other incidents we've seen, so for people to immortalize it as "berating" is stupid. Arguments with the linesmen and umps have always happened, and they aren't going to stop, so it's time for people to lighten up a bit. That is, until things get out of hand, which we all hope doesn't happen....again.
Check out the clip above.

No comments: