I'm glad you clarified that because I was about to completely light you up, your first statement didn't play well. You started whining about the Williams sisters when the topic was RF's groupies. Certainly whatever reason Serena showed up late was okay with the tournament officials and the WTA. It was a sanctioned event that has rules, you can't show up when you want to. If she was 90 minutes late she would have been withdrawn from the tournament & fined. Also why can't I find an article, blog entry, or even a story comment about this delay?
As for not liking her because she pouts, you must not like a lot of tennis players. Sharapova is the biggest pouter ever, more tennis players pout than the alternative.
Also fans and the media fall all over her because she's won 14 goddamned majors and 4 gold medals. She's unquestionably the greatest women's player of all time.
If you want to dislike her because she is an bad person to lines people, that's fine. Not liking her because she's done the work to be the most physically imposing player ever yet quick and fit is really dumb. Venus Williams is the most harmless, benign, boring star player on the tour.
Serena wasn't punish for being late because the fans would have majorly revolted. By the rules, she should have been, but the paying customers would have burned the place down. I would have agreed with you on Venus before watching her play. My point (and I admit my first post looked bad) is I was surprised by how much their fans let that stuff go. I also don't really care for Sharapova either, but I know alot of tennis fans that don't for the same reasons I came out of Cincy not really caring for the Williams sisters. They get a pass because they are American (which is understandable).
I also agree with you that the fans fall all over her because she's won 14 grandslams and 4 gold medals, but they do the same for Roger because he's arguably the greatest of all time. That's my original point their fans are equally as annoying for the same reason as Roger's, but when I saw it in person I was surprised with what their fans had to let pass compared to Roger's, espeically because a chunk of them complain about Sharapova for some of the same reasons.
From what I remember of this Serena started an hour late becuase ESPN wanted to show the finish of Venus' match because it was close and a very good match. Center court was running on two hour splits and the match before it ended about 10 or 15 min before the next match was scheduled to start so they had some wiggle room and decided that showing Venus' match to the end and all of Serena's was more beneficial than starting all of the matches exactly on time espically when they already have plans when matches last longer than two hours which is why the schedule says, for example, that a match will start not beore 1:00 pm, meaning that it could start later. Although, I don't think that they expected the match to start an hour later, I'm guessing they thought it would take 20-30 min max. I seem to remember one of the players on Venus' match making an unexpected push at the end of the match.
Still, I'm not a fan of the Williams sisters but I was sitting in Center Court as this happened and this is what I remember of it.
