Serena Williams Must Be Fined And Suspended Following Her Doubles Win

(Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)

UPDATE #2: After watching some of Serena's and Venus' press conference following their doubles victory, I am forced to stand by the tone of the original column below.

Serena appeared insincere to me, and seemed prompted by someone who reminded her she was in line to lose a series of endorsements and possibly face a greater fine and/or a suspension if she did not change her words and actions between what she said immediately following her and Venus' victory and what she was going to say in the post-match press conference. Simply put, I'm not buying it. The entire follow-through from after the Saturday evening incident has been poorly handled, and today was no exception.

That said, at least Serena offered public apologies. Yes, they may have come forth merely to try to retain lucrative advertisement deals and not of sincere contrition, but at least she offered them. That is encouraging.

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UPDATE: One of the commenters below (Jeremy Hurd) has told me that Serena apologized in the post-match press conference following the doubles victory. Good. If true, that should go a long way to ending all this and I'm glad that Serena decided to take this route following the contest, whether by her own decision or because someone told her it was her best option. I will, however, leave my title as it is and keep the article below intact.

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Serena Williams—with the help of sister Venus—today made a mockery of the United States Tennis Association (USTA), the 2009 US Open and insulted fans around the world with their actions following a 6-2, 6-2 victory in the US Open's women's doubles final over Cara Black and Liezel Huber.

Outstanding female ambassadors of the sport, people such as Pam Shriver, Mary Carillo and Mary Jo Fernandez expressed dismay and disbelief that Serena would even be allowed to participate in today's match following her disgraceful actions against a lines-woman this past Saturday in her match against Kim Clijsters.

Serena's boorishness earned her a point penalty and cost her the match, and justly so.

After her epic meltdown on Saturday night, Serena held a surreal press conference where she talked about "moving on" from the ugly actions which only took place mere moments before she was talking.

Note to Serena: You can't move on from something which hasn't been processed. That's the reason you were at the press conference, to help people understand what happened and thus give them the ability to actually move on from what you chose to do in your semifinal match.

Then, in a statement

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