A documentary that played recently at the Film Forum, “McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection,” assembles hours of footage of the tennis legend on the courts of Roland Garros in Paris. Over years at the French Open – the film centers on McEnroe’s battle in the final there against Ivan Lendl in 1984 – McEnroe displayed both the greatness and outbursts that defined him.
During one tirade, McEnroe, exasperated by the whir of a recorder, turns on the recordist. “Keep that thing away from me, you understand? ” he says. Pointing at the grip end of his racket, McEnroe adds, “In your mouth.”
The narrator, the actor Mathieu Amalric, notes that the fury McEnroe struggled to contain throughout his career on the court reflected a competitor who played “at the edge of his senses.” The flutter of a recorder amid the silence in the stadium during the moments preceding a point reverberate within McEnroe like an eruption.
I was reminded of that acuteness of sensitivity while watching Serena Williams melt down during the women’s final against Naomi Osaka at the U.S. Open. Williams shares with McEnroe both a game to behold and a tendency toward tirades.
On Saturday, Williams became furious when the umpire Carlos Ramos called out her coach Patrick Mouratoglou for signaling to Williams from the stands, a violation of the rules. Though the fault lay with Mouratoglou, Williams perceived it as a slight. “I don’t cheat to win,” she told Ramos. “I’d rather lose.”
Williams could not let it go. A few games later, while serving and up 2-1 in the second set, she forfeited a point when she smashed her racket on the ground after an unforced error.
A few more games later, during a changeover with Osaka ahead 4-3, Williams continued to insist to Ramos that she did not receive coaching. She demanded an apology from the umpire.
“Say you’re sorry,” Williams implored. “You stole a point from me. You’re a thief, too.” Ramos issued a third violation, which resulted in the automatic loss of a game.
Williams appealed, without success, to the tournament referee and the Grand Slam supervisor, to whom she raised a charge of bias. “Do you know how many other men do things that are — that do much worse than that?” she said, referring to the comments that cost her a game. “This is not fair.” (The Times has chronicled each moment of the meltdown.)
As we now know, Osaka defeated Williams, whom Osaka had called her idol. Ditto for the fans. The nearly 24,000 of them who filled Arthur Ashe Stadium booed during the trophy presentation. Social media exploded (what else) with criticism of Ramos and support for Williams.
Afterward, I wondered why Williams took such offense at Ramos’ warning her coach about coaching from the stands. It was, after all, a warning to her coach. And yet it became Williams’ unraveling.
Thus the flashback to McEnroe. Perhaps Williams, too, plays at the limits of everything. What for others, including her fellow competitors, might be an annoyance to shrug off, or a cue to get on with the match, to Williams it became an indictment of her character. She would rather lose than “cheat to win,” Williams told Ramos.
Williams was neither cheating nor losing when Ramos warned Mouratoglou. And while she never cheated, she later lost a point for smashing her racket. And then she forfeited a game for calling Ramos a thief.
The ruling by Ramos on that last point seemed to be an excess. As Sally Jenkins notes in the Washington Post, he could have de-escalated, by warning Williams without penalizing her, and “let things play out on the court.”
That leaves the racket-smashing as the only one of Williams transgressions that, strictly speaking, ran afoul of the rules. And yet Williams unraveled, which cost her the match.
Like a pro skier on a downhill run who catches an edge and crashes, blowing out her knee instead of winning a medal, Williams wiped out. The edge of her senses turned out to be a razor.