You'd like to give Serena Williams a pass, it being the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and all.
But faced for the first time at the 2011 U.S. Open with an opponent who believed she could be her physical match, Williams turned into a caricature, a stereotypical Ugly American on Sunday afternoon at Arthur Ashe Stadium. In a match that will be remembered less for its winner and more for Williams's berating of chair umpire Eva Asderaki, Williams saw her game dismantled in the women's final by Australia's Samantha Stosur 6-2, 6-3 in 1 hour 13 minutes.
Stosur became the first Australian woman to win a major championship since Evonne Goolagong Cawley won the women's title at Wimbledon in 1980.
Eighteen hours after steamrolling past world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki, Williams took the court under a leaden sky with a couple of thousand empty seats in a rematch of the women's final at this years Rogers Cup in Toronto, which was won by Williams 6-4, 6-2.
Moving tentatively, on a sore right foot that had required medical attention in the semi-final, Williams lost her first set of the 2011 event in spectacular fashion, as Stosur won two love service games and broke another at love and had her string of points won broken at 13 by a ball into the net.
It was a run-in with chair umpire Asderaki that breathed life into the match and also into Williams's game – strangely occurring on her last match of a two-year probation for threatening to shove a ball down the throat of a lineswomen in a semi-final match here in 2009. That probationary period could be extended, if the Grand Slam committee director rules that the institute constitutes a "major event."
At 30-40 in the first game of the second set, Williams let out a scream of "C'mon" as she hit what appeared to be a forehand winner. The scream came before the ball had landed and Asderaki gave the point to Stosur, citing the verbal-hindrance rule.
Williams asked Asderaki: "Aren't you the one that screwed me over last time here?"
Her petulance continued as she sat in her chair between games, with Williams telling Asderaki, "You are totally out of control," and calling her "a hater," while repeatedly snapping at her "Don't look at me.'" Asderaki looked impassively as Williams called her "unattractive inside."
Williams also felt the need to remind the chair that "we're in America, last time I checked."
Williams refused to shake Asderaki's hand after the match, and while she admitted later that she couldn't remember any previous run-in with Asderaki – who in fact did not work the game two years earlier when Williams launched on her now-famous outburst – she bizarrely refused to even hint at an apology. Instead, she preferred to focus on herself as much as even Stosur, discussing her year-long battle with injuries.
The reaction was her giving "2,000 per cent. I just am really excited to be here and to have gotten so far," Williams said. "It's the final for me and I was just … I guess I'll see it on YouTube."
Williams acknowledged that she needed some emotional spark to become, as she called herself "Serena-esque" but she denied she had intentionally tried to distract Stosur. "I just yelled," she said. "It was a great shot. The only good shot I hit all match, I think. I was, like, 'woo-hoo!'"
Tournament referee Brian Early told CBS that the correct call was made and Williams will find out Monday whether she will be assessed a fine.
Stosur was forced to wait an extended period of time before serving, waiting for the jeers and hoots of the crowd to die down. Williams caught a second wind but Stosur continued to plug away, taking advantage of Williams's shoddy serving. Williams had 25 unforced errors to Stosur's 12 and was surprised at times by the velocity on Stosur's shots. "She was cracking them today," Williams said.
After having her serve broken just seven times in her first six matches here, Williams was broken five times by the 27-year-old Australian, who said later she had never heard a crowd as loud as when she waited to serve following Williams's outburst.
So the American lost on a court named after an athlete of uncommon dignity, and even on a day so ripe with emotion for this country, when you desperately wanted to cheer for the narrative of a home-court win, it was hard not to come away believing justice was done.