Djokovic

[SebastianTheCrab]

He apparently purposely flicked the ball at a lineswoman who got hit in the throat and was disqualified.

People on Twitter are saying it was an accident. The footage isn't very clear but considering he's a top tennis player (Ie excellent control over the ball) and known misogynist it doesn't seem surprising he was angry and decided to take it out on a woman.

Particularly unimpressed by this BBC Sport tweet. How the fuck do they know it was "accidentally"? Aren't they meant to be unbiased?

The excerpt of the rules I have seen lists default as an option, not the automatic outcome. The tournament organisers may have felt any other option would look bad.

Well, Djokovic being out and Nadal / Federer not taking part means we'll have the first male first-time Grand Slam winner since 2014. So there's that.

Tim Henman was once disqualified for the same reason. Tim Henman.

The difference is that no-one believes Tim Henman could hit an official with a ball intentionally.

We have to assume Djokovic didn't intend to hit her but he still hit a ball in her general direction and it caught her in the throat. His reaction is pathetic.

Watched the match. He didn’t aim at her

That doesn’t matter. The rules are clear. defaulted

He earlier on in the match smacked a ball very hard at the hoarding

Tennis players know to b careful when clearing balls as other players/ officials/spectators are not watching what another player is doing when they are clearing balls

She wasn’t watching the lines as the ball wasn’t in play at time

Women can play 5 sets !!

They do in league tennis in the past and they are just club players not elite athletes

Tbh 5 set matches can be omg just finish now which is why new rules are being brought in to speed it up

@charlestonchaplin

As regards equal pay in grand slams, I think I would be highly annoyed if a co-worker got the same pay as me whilst being required to do less work. Regardless of whether that co-worker was a woman, man or half dog and half goat.

I know men and women are built differently but I’m not sure the impact on men of having to play five sets is roughly the same as the effect on women of having to play three. It is a strain for the men to play five sets as they don’t do it all the time, just for the grand slams. They usually play best of three like the women.

Best of four doesn’t work to decide between two players every time, and five sets is probably beyond the capabilities of most women. Which leaves reducing the prize money somewhat for women. I don’t think it’s necessarily misogyny to come to this conclusion. I favour honesty in these discussions rather than tribalism. We say the TRAs should accept reality. I think it harms us in the long run if we don’t face facts as well.

This is just an academic discussion, by the way, since women have been paid the same as men at grand slams for some time.

Do you also think marathon runners should be paid many multiples of what sprinters get at professional events?

charles

My impression (as a non tennis fan) is that women weren’t allowed to play 5 sets

Which wasn’t fair with regards to the prize money

So true openlygay

He didn't even hit the ball in anger, he just hit it away to the back of the court and the line judge happened to be there. All the dramatic choking was a bit odd unless is caught her very unfortunately. I don't like the man & it's absolutely right that he was disqualified but I find it extremely hard to make it a feminist issue, or even one of anger.

Once again the feminist issue is the sexist criticism of the line judge.
Go on social media and read what has been written about her.
Poor woman got hit in the throat and got abuse for it.

Meanwhile Djokovic can't even face the media to apologise like a grown up.

Just to say, laryngeal trauma can kill because it compromiseS oxygen intake.

No way the medical
Attention was overkill.

Yup she is being slated in SM.

That is the feminist issue

Yep and he didn’t go to presser just went home

To hope to grow as a human being 🤦‍♀️

I'd just come on to say the same thing Mumsnut. It hit her squarely over the larynx. This can kill very quickly, due to swelling occluding the airway.

@littlbrowndog

Yup she is being slated in SM.

That is the feminist issue

Yep and he didn’t go to presser just went home

To hope to grow as a human being 🤦‍♀️

I totally agree with this - the social media response is appalling and is deeply misogynistic.

(And you can see in some of the video clips just how seriously she's struggling to breathe - as Mumsnut says, this sort of injury can be fatal.)

It was very clearly an accident.

Yeah and what’s with the dramatic choking comment cookerhood

She was hit in the throat by a tennis ball hit by Novak

🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Social media is a horrific place for any woman in the news. It’s daily misogyny and harassment that doesn’t get the police knocking on anyone’s door like misgendering does. It’s an issue for the feminist forum for sure. The OP didn’t phrase it that way and then brought class into it.

I think he should have been penalised, not because it hit a woman but because he the ball in a temper which resulted in a person being injured. I would not like to be hit in the throat by a tennis ball doing 40-mph, I'm pretty sure that would be quite a painful and frightening experience.

We are hardly in a position to assess whether a person's choking noises after being hit in the larynx are odd. There really isn't any way to say that without being ridiculous.

@MillyMollyFarmer

Social media is a horrific place for any woman in the news. It’s daily misogyny and harassment that doesn’t get the police knocking on anyone’s door like misgendering does. It’s an issue for the feminist forum for sure. The OP didn’t phrase it that way and then brought class into it.

Agree. The OP didn't ask if the social media reaction (which I haven't seen) was mysogyny (social media so of course it is), she accused Novak of purposefully injuring the lineswoman because she is a woman and he's a mysogynist.

If it happened to be a male line judge it wouldn't have changed the outcome. Hit the ball in anger and hurt somenone, straight out. Its consistent with others like Henman.

Reverse the sexes
If women's finals tickets sold for up to 5x as much as men's finals, yet male finalists were paid the same as female, would that be ok?
Then to top it off, because female finalists played more sets than males , male finalists had time to play in mixed doubles matches earning even more than female finalists, even though the women brought in more revenue and worked longer.
That in essence is what Djokovic was complaining about.

The female tennis players have said that they're willing to play 5 sets. The tournament organisers have said they can't accommodate this within a 2 week tournament. It's not women's fault that they don't have the opportunity to play 5 set matches.

As mentioned upthread, 5 sets are only played in the Grand Slams. The rest of the time, women and men on the professional tennis circuit play best of 3.

The real money is in sponsorship, exhibitions and appearance fees. Here, Roger Federer out earns everyone because he is very popular and marketable. The top men earn more this way than the top women. Among the women, Sharapova earned much more than Serena Williams at one point because while Serena was winning the tournaments, Sharapova had much better sponsorship deals.

Lots of people are commenting that the decision is unfair because they are applying intentionality, as would be the case in football when a player gets a red card. Tennis experts say that's not how it works when a player hits a line judge or official. However the misogyny has become overt because, by chance, he hit a woman. His comments about women players have ramped up the debate between the different factions in a way that did not happen when Henman hit a lineswoman or if Federer or Nadal had done the same thing.

Todd Woodbridge thinks the decision to disqualify him was correct and I agree. It wasn't an accident it was a fit of anger. It wasn't a soft shot either.

wwos.nine.com.au/videos/tennis/djokovic-incident-will-change-tennis-woodbridge/ckerocdfs000y0hpnmeowdapf

@Childrenofthestones

Reverse the sexes If women's finals tickets sold for up to 5x as much as men's finals, yet male finalists were paid the same as female, would that be ok? Then to top it off, because female finalists played more sets than males , male finalists had time to play in mixed doubles matches earning even more than female finalists, even though the women brought in more revenue and worked longer. That in essence is what Djokovic was complaining about.

You've missed out the important fact that this is imposed by tournament organisers. It would be no fairer to allow men the opportunity to earn more because of the way the tournament is structured. All that does is replace a shit situation with a shit solution.

If people want to argue that prize money should be based on who sells more tickets, fine. But the men who want change should frame it in that way, so it's clear their views are not mere sexism and they'd also accept lower renumeration should they cease to be the greater draw.