Female athletes in pursuit of greatness

At this year's French Open, it was made apparent that even without playing against a member of the opposite sex, Serena often finds herself in a handicapped scenario on the tennis court. In addition to facing competition that is increasingly determined to dethrone her (which is certainly fair), she often has to deal with hostile crowds vehemently opposed to her success (which most certainly is not fair, in fact, it's deplorable). Excuses are routinely concocted for such boorish behavior as was demonstrated by fans in Roland Garros, but I for one am not buying them. It has been said that fans get on Venus' and Serena's case because of the antics of their opinionated and somewhat obnoxious father, but he has been keeping a lower profile for some time now, and their mother who now coaches them is clearly a class act. Yet still the boos come. There are those who claim it's natural for fans to grow bored with dominance by a single individual or team in a sport, and to clamor for change at the top of the heap. But I didn't hear much booing of the Lakers, or the Yankees, or Pete Sampras as they were victorious time and time again. For winning four consecutive Grand Slams, Serena Williams should be regularly greeted by ovations. Instead, she provoked the ire of the French Open crowd simply by protesting some calls, even after it was proven that her protests were valid and the bad calls were overruled. To compare the booing of Serena to the booing of Martina Hingis during her 1999 French Open final loss to Steffi Graf is preposterous, but nonetheless, people have called the situations identical. The truth is that Martina was booed for making an ass of herself, something she repeatedly did throughout her career, for her level of maturity never did catch up to the grace of her game. As for Serena, like her mother and older sister, she has been nothing but dignified on and off the court. I do acknowledge that recent political tensions between France and the United States may have played a minor part. I concede that it was reasonable for Justine Henin-Hardenne to be the crowd favorite because she is from the neighboring country of Belgium and speaks fluent French. But there is a big difference between actively rooting for a player on one side of the net, and mean-spiritedly

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