Serena Williams' Meltdown Leads to Odd Ending Against Clijsters Andy McCullough - The Star-Ledger go to original September 13, 2009
US OPEN 2009 - Serena Williams disqualified from Semi Finals against Kim Clijsters
New York - They gathered on the center court of Arthur Ashe Stadium, the U.S. Open head referee, the aggrieved lineswoman and a fuming Serena Williams. The lineswoman leaned toward the head referee, Brian Earley, and spoke. Williams erupted. "I didn't say I would kill you!" Williams shouted. "Are you serious?" Williams said something. Moments before, the lineswoman called a foot fault on Williams as she served for her tournament life in her semifinal match against Kim Clijsters at the U.S. Open last night. A foot fault, rarely called - especially when a match is on the line - is when the server's foot touches the baseline before making contact with the ball. The call was close and put Williams on the precipice. It gave a match-point chance to Clijsters and turned a seesaw match into an expletive-laden storm. Williams turned toward the woman, shook her racket and screamed. She said something . Replays showed that Williams threatened to stuff the ball down the lineswoman's throat. After the match, Williams said it wasn't "necessary" to repeat what she said on the court. She brushed off the idea of apologizing to the lineswoman because "how many people yell at linespeople?" Either way, the officials ruled that the outburst was a code violation, Williams' second of the match, and called a point penalty. The defending champion was gone. She strode across the court and shook the hand of Clijsters. "It just happened that this point penalty," Earley said, "was on match point." The last-minute controversy overshadowed what was a masterful performance by Kim Clijsters, the 26-year-old, once-retired Belgian. Clijsters won, 6-4, 7-5. She will face Caroline Wozniacki in the final; they will play tonight at 9. Wozniacki defeated Yanina Wickmayer in the other semifinal, 6-3, 6-3. "It's unfortunate that a match that I was playing so well in (had) to end that way," Clijsters said. "To this point, I'm still confused about what happened out there." As the drama played out, Clijsters stood on the other side of the court. She looked down and plucked the strings of her racket as Williams' cool melted. "I saw Serena talking to the lineswoman over there," Clijsters said. "But I was obviously too far away to hear what was going on." Clijsters now will have a chance to win her second U.S. Open title. She won her only Grand Slam here in 2005. This is her first appearance at Flushing Meadows since then. Nagging injuries and her desire to start a family led to her retirement in 2007, but she returned, better than ever, in August. Clijsters burst through the early rounds of this tournament, eliminating Venus Williams in the process. The match yesterday was delayed more than an hour by the rain that's hounded this tournament for three days. When it started, Clijsters kept Williams on the run and moving backward. Until last night, Williams dominated. She breezed to semifinals and never lost a set in the finals. But Clijsters made her mortal. She placed shots deep by the baseline and Williams couldn't press the action. Her returns flew long and out of bounds again and again. Clijsters tugged Williams around the court and hit enough extra shots to induce 31 unforced errors. "I think that Kim played really well," Williams said. "And I think she came out with a really big plan." Williams double-faulted to lose the first set. She smashed her racket on the court. The string curled and warped. Across the net, Clijsters heard it crack. The chair umpire called Williams for a code violation. The two women would trade jabs for much of the second set. Clijsters keep pecking away, but Williams responded. When her serve worked, she could attack the net and paste shots for winners. She pounded aces and saved three matches points to make hold serve at 4-all. But Clijsters covered too much ground and Williams couldn't break her serve enough. In the final game, Williams slapped a return into the net to make the score 15-30. Her next serve faulted. Then everything went haywire. Williams smiled and laughed with reporters later. She didn't understand why the lineswoman might feel threatened, because "I've never been a fight in my whole life." She must have foot faulted, because the lineswoman was "doing her job. I'm not going to knock her for not doing her job." "I like to learn from the past," Williams said, "live in the present, and not make the same mistakes in the future."
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Americas & Beyond | September 2009 
Andy McCullough - The Star-Ledger
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