Federer and Williams

In the last two days, Roger Federer and Serena Williams had remarkably similar and uncharacteristic incidents.

Federer lost a critical point when his opponent was given way too much time to challenge a call, costing him his service game and his likely going up 2 sets to none. Serena was serving 5-6 15-30 in the second set, and was called for a foot fault. After berating the line judge, she was assessed a point penalty that ended the match.

They were both wrong to yell at the officials, which is out of character for them. What has been lost in the controversy is that I believe they were both robbed by bad calls of matches that they were probably going to win. Bad calls are an unfortunate part of all sports. It is just a shame when they affect the outcome of a tournament, especially when the players are setting records that will impact the history books.