Short Note: Serena Faces Yet Another Racist French Open Slight, Loses In Quarterfinals

By: dwil

Today Serena Williams is playing Svetlana Kuznetsova in her continuing pursuit of an 11th Grand Slam tournament win. The Fend Federation, which puts on the event, is responsible for showing up to matches involving top or all-time great players, which Serena is both. While Serena is in her third set, Roger Federer and French player Gael Monfils took the court for their quarterfinal match. Understandably the reserve box for the Federation is full. Yet the box for the Federation at Serena’s match is almost completely empty. with only two matches of import on the Roland Garros grounds, there is literally no excuse for the reserve boxes on both courts to be full.

Additionally, the Kuznetsova-Wiliams is the featured women’s match of the day, yet it was played on the Suzanne Lenglen Court. Meantime the Samantha Stosur-Sorana cirstea match, in which Stosur wiped out Cirstea 6-1, 6-3, was played on the Phillipe Chatrier court, or the main center court at Roland Garros. Lenglen is by far the slowest of the two courts, providing Kuznetsova the best possible opportunity to pull off the upset. Svetlana is an accomplished clay court player and is far more comfortable than is Williams on the red clay. Had the match been played on Chatrier the Roland Garros center court, Kuznetsova would have a far more difficult time handling the poser of Serena’s serves and groundstokes.

While some may question putting Serena on a court where she has a clear advantage, it is the nature of tennis where the higher seed is always afforded as many advantages as possible over a lower-ranked player (like home court advantage in other sports).

That Williams was forced to play on Lenglen is yet another sign of the Fench’s continuing racism being directed the Williams’ way.

And Williams lost this quarterfinals match, 7-6 (7-3), 5-7, 7-5 on a court where Kuznetsova reached up to 25% more groundstrokes Williams hit than she would have if the match was played on the far quicker clay of Chatrier.