Is John McEnroe right about Serena?

[MercuryMadness]

I know nowt about tennis but from watching bits here and there, I cannot believe McEnroe is right. Serena looks so powerful and masterful with the ball.

I can see her giving lots of male professionals a fucking drubbing.

Is he really right?

different She can say dodgy stuff about rape and still be a victim of racism and sexism though.

Rape myths are called myths for a reason. They are hard to dislodge.

I'm not in any way excusing what she said. She is an international figure, a woman, need to be careful and should known better.

But I have seen enough threads on mumsnet to know that rape myths are ittwrly ingrained. I have seen lightbulb moments popping off all over the thread when the logic behind dispelling these myths is irrefutable.

But it's a long slog. Hopefully she got enough feedback from that awful interview for her to re-examine her viewpoint.

*utterly
Loads of typos - sorry.

BigYellowJumper True, and I agree.

Datun ... No excuses.

He's a tool. I look forward to seeing his book at no 700 on the bestseller list.

Didn't he used to be somebody?

Serena Williams definitely still someone. Awesome tennis player and she's growing a whole human being. No man can do that.

Calm down and read the whole post and consider it in context and proportion Mrs McEnroe Vulval. You'll do yourself a mischief leaping to judgement!

Andy Murray once corrected an interviewer who said he was the first to do such-and-such (can't remember the achievement). He replied that no, Serena Williams was the first.

I like Andy anyway but liked him a bit more after that.

Backtracking?

How? I haven't even mentioned anything from my own post. Just suggested you re-read and use some sense.

RockyBird, it was John Inverdale at the Olympics and it was priceless.

Ah, John Inverdale, the less said about him the better.

I like the comparison with weight categories in boxing. You wouldn't pit a flyweight against a heavyweight in the ring.

Or, to use another comparison, you wouldn't say a bass is a better singer than a soprano because he can hit all those deep notes and she can't. You definitely wouldn't try forcing them to reach each other's notes; it's pointless and dangerous. They are both singers. Andy Murray and Serena Williams both play tennis but they do so differently. You might prefer one to the other, just as you might prefer soprano to bass. It doesn't mean one's better than the other.

www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jul/01/serena-williams-john-mcenroe-tennis-gender-championship-equality-sexist

when you read stuff like this on mumsnet you really despair.
everything is not a male conspiracy.first poster comes on swearing about serena being powerful and better than the men..
backed up by other posters who have obviously no idea what mcenroe said.mcenroe said she was the best woman player of all time.interviewer said no shes the best player of any sex all time..mcenroe disagreed.what is wrong with that?
serenaand nike are consistently boasting about her being the best sports person of all time -even though she would get /has been hammered by not very good men.its serena saying shes better than the men not the other way round.
according to mumsnet , men being more powerful is unfair but serena is only womens best player because she is more powerful than the other women..

Thanks for that incisive and thoughtful contribution to the thread, it's particularly clear that you read and understood the points people have been making so far.

even though she would get /has been hammered by not very good men.its serena saying shes better than the men not the other way round. She payed a male tennis player 18 years ago. It seems that no one is willing to do the maths and the assumption she will still be the same person 18 years later, even though she is a better player now. I wonder if people will say the same for Andy Murray is the same player who at the age of 18, 21, 17. No! We would not say that because he has become a better player and more skilled and so, has Serena.
Serena her herself said she would not be able to beat Andy but we all know there is a possibility she can do better than a lot of men.

The 700 mark is people are trying to point that she is a non entity when it comes to tennis playing. But in this instance, it's not about Serena but about female sport in general.
I also, wonder what would happen if this was not about Serena abut Sharapova being in Serena' shoes. (With no drug test failure and was as good) The debate I have a feeling would be very different.

she certainly is better.unfortunately her male opponent in 1998 was drunk when they played. mcenroe was being very generous when he said she would be ranked 700th.she gets beaten by her college player male hitting partner - chris evert got beaten by jeb bush for gods sake.
. mcenroe was very complimentary about serena.it was the female interviewer who pushed the view that she was the best female or male player of all time and mcenroe pointed out that was not the case.unfortunately she and the posters on here seem unable to accept the fact that they cant compete with the men.
point is it doesnt matter.who cares?no man is going around boasting that he can beat a female tennis player.they are different competitions.

Fgs, it's the wrong question. It's a stupid conversation that is only had by people who think that women are lesser than men. MacEnroe should have shut down that line of questioning like Andy Murray does, instead he joined in and mused about exactly how crap Serena would be if she competed in an category she doesn't qualify for. It's as idiotic as thinking that the heavyweight categories in sports like boxing and weightlifting are "better" than the lighter categories, because the lighter athletes couldn't compete with the bigger ones.

not a case of people having this conversation thinking that women are lesser than men at all.
quite the opposite.the female interviewer asking the question was trying to claim that serena was superior to all other male players that had ever played the game.not sure why nobody on here is attacking her ?
mcenroe merely pointed out this was not the case.

In his opinion. Which is the point. The interviewer might think that Serena is the best tennis player ever, that's up to her. I might think that Manny Pacquiao is the best boxer ever, someone else might think Joe Calzaghe is, and another might think Muhammad Ali. People seem quite capable of having those sorts of discussions without saying that only heavyweight boxers can be the best boxers ever, because lighter weight boxers couldn't compete with them.

He might be right about her ranking 700 overall, and he might not be. He wasn't right to make the distinction between her being a great athlete and a great female athlete though, and her overall ranking, whatever it is, doesn't justify that. She is a better athlete than 90% of the planet and probably 99% of anyone who shares her biology, so she is a great athlete and he was being a dick to try and diminish that.

The Battle of the Sexes match that I enjoyed was between Navratilova and Connors. The first set went to a tiebreak, but Connors took the second set comfortably.

That was however before the 'power serve' took over as the winning thing in men's tennis (making it, to me, rather less interesting to watch televised)