Williams’ Words to Judge Saturday Night Should Be Classified as Verbal Abuse

In this video, it’s evident that the judge and/or official believed that Serena told the judge she was going to kill her. This isn’t strictly true. From ESPN:

Dropping the f-word liberally, Williams said, “I swear to God I’m [expletive] going to take this [expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat, you hear that? I swear to God.“Beside the fact that Williams didn’t specifically say, “I’m going to kill you,” this is obvious hyperbole -- in other words, it was an illustrative exaggeration. It shouldn’t be classified as a literal threat, but as verbal abuse with enough vitriol behind it to take seriously. Still, verbally abusing a judge is grounds for a one-point penalty. Unfortunately for Williams, this occurred just prior to match point, and Kim Clijsters won as a result.