Roland Garros Crisis Center, Day 14

The Ladies final is bearing down on us, folks, and this morning we have Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal pre-final pressers. I haven't written much about the men's finalists this week, and I hope you're all okay with that; after the tournament, I'll ask for your feedback on the way TennisWorld covered the event. Keep your powder dry until I ask, okay?

I'd like to address one issue that has, once again, flared to life in my recent post on Justine (BTW, some of you Justine KADs need to take things a little less literally, hard as it may be. Do you really think I was making fun of Henin's refreshingly natural, glam-averse nature?). We don't need to go back and start gnawing at this bone again, either, but here's my take on the notorious "hand incident" that transpired at the French Open semis of 2003.

1 - The incident did not occur at a critical time in the match (Serena led, 4-2, 30-love), even though it appeared to have a critical impact on the match. If you examine Serena's emotional post-match presser, she said as much. Bottom line for me: Serena lost her composure. There were very valid reasons for why that happened, and you had to sympathize with her. On the other hand, the difference between a champion and a contender is that a champion either blanks out or takes emotional fuel from controversy and adversity, while a contender allows it to knock her off her horse. This is a very high standard, to be sure, and I'm not holding Serena (or anyone else) to it. But this is the reality. If Serena wins that match, it is a classic "Warrior Moment."  You don't expect or demand that people have those, you just appreciate them when they occur.

2 - The French crowd, stoked by a previous line-call controversy in which Serena challenged a call, was more distracting to Serena than was Justine's real or imagined lack of sportsmanship. Bottom line for me: If you want to blame someone for the collapse of Serena's game, blame the crowd.

3 - The "hand up" dilemma is a recurring, unavoidable one. We saw that again just the other day, in the Maria Sharapova-Patty Schnyder match. Because the actions take place in real time that can't be properly revisited, even on video, the resolution of this controversy always rests on one of two factors: The willingness of the chair umpire, rightly or wrongly, to make a judgment call, or the willingness of the offending player to step outside the framework of the rulebook to satisfy the aggrieved player. When neither of these things occur (which was the case in this particular incident), nothing can be resolved and the door is left open to debate. Bottom line for me: Neither of the two factors above kicked in; all you can do is shrug and  occupy the middle ground of "who  knows"?

4 - The media. The US view of this incident was shaped by a remarkable, full-frontal drive to position the controversy as the determining moment in the match. The endless replays, the emotional reactions of the announcers, all of those things enabled the incident to take on out-sized proportions. You show something 16,000 times, position it to support a certain point of view, and you have a great example of what is commonly called The Big Lie (say something often enough and people believe it). Bottom line for me: The controversy was created, supercharged, and sustained not by the players but the media.

Bottom line for me:  One of the least well understood and appreciated approaches to sportsmanship is the notion that the players give deference to the rules and officials, refusing to take matters into their own hands - for either gain or loss. Some players (like Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras) adopt this attitude, while others (John McEnroe) do not, but the curious thing is that it the old-school Aussie attitude (play the call) tends to win-out over the more contemporary, Right is right and to hail with the bulls** rules and officials. . .* attitude. Does anyone doubt that McEnroe, with his vaunted "honesty" and contempt for hypocrisy or incompetence was one of the worst sports of the Open era?

I admire good sportsmanship -did anyone catch that moment yesterday when Rafael Nadal overturned a call in Novak Djokovic's favor with a brief, subtle gesture? - but you can't expect or demand a player to practice it. We know what happened when Justine became The Little Backhand That Quit in her 2006 Australian Open final; I excoriated her for that and still think it was perhaps the worst display of sportsmanship I've ever seen on a big stage at a big moment. But the hand incident was different.

Nobody was "inside" Justine's mind or body in Australia, but there was plenty of evidence suggesting that she could have endured those last few games and allowed Amelie Mauresmo her full, deserved moment of glory. But the hand incident was an event of much smaller magnitude, far less impact, and - this part is critical - far, far more difficult for us to judge, in terms of how it transpired and affected play at the precise moment it occurred - just like in the Sharapova/Schnyder match.

Bottom line for me: In the hand incident, pinning Serena's collapse and loss on Justine's hand gesture requires connecting a lot of dots with a righteousness and presumption I am unwilling to adopt. Justine was not committing an act of poor sportsmanship as much as refusing to commit an act of good sportsmanship. She became one of the long list of champions who took a similar route, including Steffi Graf in the Martina Hingis "meltdown" match. And there's real difference between cheating and failing to do a "right thing" that is not demanded by the rules.