In the United States, the power of Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka is eclipsed by a power play of the referee.

Chair umpire Carlos Ramos managed to steal not one but two players in the U final. Nobody has ever seen anything like it: A referee so destroyed a big opportunity that the two players, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams, were distracted by the tears that ran down their faces when the trophy was awarded. Ramos took what started as a minor offense and turned it into one of the most vicious and emotional controversies in the history of tennis, all because he could not take a woman who spoke very loudly.

Williams abused his racket, but Ramos did something much more ugly: he abused his authority. Champions heat up – it's their nature to burn. All good referees of all sports understand that the heart of their job is helping to temper the moment, lowering speed, and being silent guardians of the event rather than letting their own temperament play a role in the determination of the result. Instead, Ramos became the main player in the women's final. He stained the first title of the Osaka Grand Slam and one of Williams' latest offers for greatness of all time. On what? A tone of voice The male players swore and swore breathlessly, threw and blew their equipment into shards, and were never penalized since Williams was in the second run of the American final.

[Naomi Osaka upsets Serena Williams, who received game penalty, to win 2018 U.S. Open]

"I think that having to go through there is just an example for the next person who has emotions and wants to express themselves and wants to be a strong woman," she said later.

It was the pure pettiness of Ramos that sparked the ugly waterfall, when he had issued a warning on coaching, as if a signal from Patrick Mouratoglou in the stand had already made the difference in a match of Serena Williams . It was a technicality that could be invoked to any player in any match on any occasion and laughable because of the ruling power match that was taking place on the pitch between Williams and Osaka , 20 years old. This is an additional stress factor for Williams, who is still trying to get back from her maternity leave and fight to regain her fitness and resume her quest for Margaret Court's record of 24 Grand Slam titles. "I'm not cheating," she said quickly to Ramos.

When Williams, still in turmoil, broke his racket by losing a crucial game, Ramos put a point. Breaking the equipment is a violation, and as Ramos had already hit it with the coaching violation, it was a second offense and therefore increased the penalty.

The controversy should have stopped there. At that time, it was in Ramos to defuse the situation, stop fitting into the match and let things unfold on the pitch. In front of him, there were two players in a stuffy state, who gave everything, while he was sitting at a lofty height above them. Below him, Williams said, "You've stolen a point. You are a thief.

There was absolutely nothing worthy of penalizing in the declaration. It was pure steam. She said with a tone of anger, but it was compressed and controlled. All Ramos had to do was sit above him and Williams would be in the game. But he could not take it. He was not going to let a woman talk to him that way. A man, of course. Ramos has borne the worst of a man. At the 2017 French Open, Ramos inflicted a penalty on Rafael Nadal in a timely manner, and Nadal told him that he would ensure that Ramos did not referee any of his matches.

But he was not going to take it from a woman who was pointing at him and talking about aggression. So he inflicted on Williams this third violation for "verbal abuse" and a whole match penalty, and now he was 5-3, and we'll never know if the young Osaka really won the US Open of 2018 or if Serena Williams was going to feel his power. It was a much worse offense than Williams had committed. Chris Evert spoke to the crowd and on television when she said, "I have been in tennis for a long time and I have never seen anything like it."

[Serena Williams’s game penalty at U.S. Open final sparks torrent of reactions]

Competitive rage has long been the essence of Williams, and he is a situational personality. The whole world knows it and Ramos too. She had cases where she decried and deserved to be disciplined, but she survived all of that. She has become a passionate player, has done the admirable job of learning self-control, and has become one of the most gracious and generous champions in the game. If you were to doubt it, everything you had to do was look at how she ended up after the match was over and how much she had tried to convince Osaka.

Williams understood that she was the only person in the stadium to have the power to make this exasperated crowd stop booing. And she did it beautifully. "Let's make the moment the best moment possible," she said.

The tumultuous emotions at the end of the match were complex and profound. Osaka did not want to receive anything and wept over the loot. Williams was disgusted with what had been taken away from him and also visibly sick with regard to her role in depriving a great new player of her time. The crowd was livid for both.

Ramos had saved his ego and, in the act, had taken something from Williams and Osaka that they could never come back. Perhaps the most important task of any referee is to respect the ephemeral nature of the competitors and the competition. Osaka will never be able to recover this moment. It's gone. Williams can never, never recover tonight. It's gone. And so, Williams was quite right to call him a thief.