Super Bowl Update

So by now I'm sure you've all heard 100 times how Serena Williams kinda lost it during her semifinal match against Kim Clijsters. While I don't condone Serena's outburst (i actually think The Open was not strong enough in the penalty against her) I understand why she got so upset. Foot Fault can be a very cheap call. There is no challenge for it and this year at the open it seemed line judges were calling them left and right. Not just against Serena, but against many others. I think there's a time and a place to call a foot fault and it's not always when a server's foot touches the line. If it's on a first serve and the player makes a blatant step into the playing field, then call the foot fault. If it's a second serve, with the player serving at 15-30 4-5 in the second set and it's a close call? You let the players play through. It's like during the NBA play-offs. The refs stop calling the little pushes so the players can PLAY. And in Serena's case it was a BAD call. She didn't even foot fault! So Serena was angry with herself for being behind and when she got that bogus foot fault call, she exploded. She shouldn't have done it, but she's human and emotion got the better of her. Also in her defense, I will say she immediately calmed down, and realized she was at fault. She went over and shook Kim's hand and showed up for her post-match press obligations and explained what happened. I thought she handled herself very well after the fact.

What's kinda funny now though, is that Serena is featured in the new ad campaign for Tampax in which she battles Mother Nature on the tennis court, pummeling her with tennis balls. You can't help but draw comparisons to when she threatened that little lines person with shoving a tennis ball down her throat. Judge for yourself.



Tampax is taking the "all press is good press" approach and not backing down from the ad campaign. I don't think they should either. I think it's kinda funny and maybe the timing is a little awkward, but Serena is an awesome champion and one little non-that-time-of-the-month outburst is going to tarnish that. Battle on, Serena. Show Mother Nature who's boss!