“Ugliness was just raining down!” When the hostile Indian Wells crowd racially abused Serena Williams and heckled Naomi Osaka
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Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka
As much as we hate it, sports can be cruel at times and can even turn very ugly for some. Indian Wells is considered to be one of the most prestigious tournaments in the world and due to its passive crowd pull, is also considered to be the fifth slam. Although the majority of the players have very good memories at Palm Spring, some have a love-hate relationship with it.
For instance, the Indian Wells crowd can be pretty mean at times towards the players they don’t like and the same thing was witnessed at Indian Wells earlier this year. 4-time grand slam champion Naomi Osaka, who was struggling with form, was heckled by the crowd. During the first set, one of the spectators yelled, “Naomi, you suck” after which the Japanese was startled. She even complained to the umpire and was seen crying. She eventually lost the match in straight sets and was bageled in the first set.
At Indian Wells two decades ago, a similar incident took place only the intensity of it was very high. Serena Williams, who was 19 years old in 2002, was booed and racially abused when she stepped on the center court to play the final against Kim Clijsters. It was after this horrible experience that Serena, along with her sister Venus, decided to boycott Indian Wells for the next 14 years.
Later in her autobiography in 2009, Serena revealed in detail the extreme situation she had to go through. She said that the whole crowd was against her for no reason and there were constant racial slurs hurled at her.
“What got me most of all was that it wasn’t just a scattered bunch of boos. It wasn’t coming from just one section. It was like the whole crowd got together and decided to boo all at once. The ugliness was just raining down on me, hard. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. What was most surprising about this uproar was the fact that tennis fans are typically a well-mannered bunch. They’re respectful. They sit still. And in Palm Springs, especially, they tended to be pretty well-heeled, too,” she said.
Richard and Venus Williams were also booed and abused along with Serena Williams at Indian Wells
She even said that some typical American white supremacy was evident in the crows and she felt like these people were going to come looking for her after the match.
“But I looked up and all I could see was a sea of rich people—mostly older, mostly white—standing and booing lustily, like some kind of genteel lynch mob. I don’t mean to use such inflammatory language to describe the scene, but that’s really how it seemed from where I was down on the court. Like these people were gonna come looking for me after the match,” she said.
She even said that the n-word was thrown around on multiple occasions to address her by the crowd. “There was no mistaking that all of this was meant for me. I heard the word n***** a couple of times, and I knew. I couldn’t believe it. That’s just not something you hear in polite society on that stadium court,” she added.
Shockingly, Serena even revealed that when her dad, Richard Williams, and her sister, Venus Williams were walking toward her box before the match, the crowd booed them and that was the reason why the Williams sisters didn’t return to Indian Wells for 14 years.
“Just before the start of play, my dad and Venus started walking down the aisle to the players’ box by the side of the court, and everybody turned and started to point and boo at them. It was mostly just a chorus of boos, but I could still hear shouts of ’N*****!’ here and there. I even heard one angry voice telling us to go back to Compton. It was unbelievable. We refused to return to Indian Wells. Even now, all these years later, we continue to boycott the event,” she said.
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