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Serena Williams said she was double-standard when she was cited for verbal abuse by chair referee Carlos Ramos in the women's final of the US Open on Saturday.
"There are men who are doing a lot worse than me, but because I'm a woman, you're going to take it away from me?", She protested in front of Brian Earley, the tournament referee. "This is not correct."
Each situation must be evaluated on its own merits, but according to data compiled by officials at Grand Slam tournaments over the last 20 years, men are more often sanctioned for verbal abuse.
These figures, obtained by the New York Times, show that from 1998 to 2018, during the four Grand Slam events, men were fined much more frequently than women, with one exception: coaching mistakes .
The fines result from investigations conducted by the tournament referee and the grand slam supervisor regarding violations of the code of conduct evaluated by the chair umpire during a match. The Grand Slam tournament figures come from all qualifying matches, singles and doubles for a period of 20 years – tens of thousands of matches.
The men were fined 646 times for racquet abuse and 287 times for unsportsmanlike conduct. The women were fined 99 times for racquet abuse and 67 times for unsportsmanlike conduct during this period.
The disparities are similar with respect to the fines for audible obscenity (344 for men, 140 for women) and, more specifically, for Williams' complaint, verbal abuse (62 for men and 16 for women). ).
Williams was penalized for verbal abuse after calling Ramos a "thief" and "liar" in the second round of her 6-2, 6-4 loss to Naomi Osaka.
Although Williams did not use obscenity, she accused Ramos of dishonesty, triggering the violation of the code of conduct and, later, a $ 10,000 fine for that offense.
Part of the disparity between men's and women's fines can be explained by the fact that men play more tennis in Grand Slam tournaments. They play singles matches in the four major tournaments and also the best of five in the men's doubles at Wimbledon, while the women play three-sets matches in all cases.
To take an example, at the 2018 Open, the men played a total of 460 sets or partial sets in the main draw in singles. The women played a total of 283 sets or partial singles, which represents 61.5% of the men's figure.
There are also simply more men at the Grand Slam tournaments because, during qualifying, there are 128 singles places for men at the Open of Australia, at the Open. of France and Wimbledon, and only 96 for women.
But even with these factors in mind, men seem to be fined proportionally more often than women for various offenses.
This does not apply to coaching, for which women received 152 fines over a 20-year period, compared to 87 for men.
The first of three Williams code violations in the Open final was illegal training, and his coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, later admitted he was using hand signals, although he is not sure that Williams saw them.
Match coaching is prohibited in all Grand Slam tournaments in single and double draw matches.
It is not known why women are more often punished for breaking the rule. They usually receive match training during regular tours, where coaches are allowed to come into the field once per set, with some exceptions. This type of coaching has been allowed during WTA matches since the 2009 season, but stand coaching remains illegal.
There was a noticeable increase in the number of fines for players since coaching became legal on the WTA Tour. (It should be noted that all female tennis coaches, except a handful, are men.)
Women received 65 training fines between 1998 and 2008 at Grand Slam tournaments. In the nine years since 2009, they have received 87 coaching fines. But in both periods, women's numbers remained significantly higher than men's. The men received 37 coach fines from 1998 to 2008; 50 from 2009 to 2018.
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