Yahoo Blogger’s Stupid Posts against Williams sisters

To anyone who hasn’t heard of his name, it’s Chris Chase. Amongst others, he contributes to the Yahoo tennis blog, BUSTED RACQUET. In his more recent entries, he has written posts against the Williams sisters that are biased, uncalled for and yes, very stupid.

GAME: In ranking the 10 best women’s tennis players of the decade, Chris Chase put Venus William’s achievements behind that of Maria Sharapova. This caused a lot of disagreements from the blog readers. In the initial post, Chris Chase put the number of slams won by Venus at 5 instead of 7. This was later corrected after several comments were made on this. As for Sharapova, Chase comments that she finished in the top 10 for six consecutive years. A check at the WTA tour website reveals that Sharapova had a year end top 10 rank from 2004 to 2008. That’s five years. This incorrect stat has still not been corrected. In contrast, Venus had a year end top 10 ranking in eight of the ten years in the past decade.

In defense of this ranking, Chris Chase notes: “I stand by my ranking of Sharapova ahead of Venus. There are dozens of reasons Venus could have been higher (more Grand Slams, more tournaments won), but there are dozens of reasons Sharapova should be too (more year-end top 5s, didn't squander talent)”. He has never revealed the “dozens of reasons” why Sharapova should be ranked ahead of Venus, simply because they don’t exist. A comparison of statistics shows the following:

Grand Slam Performance:

Venus won 7 majors, 6 other major finals, and reached the finals of all 4 Grand Slams.
Sharapova won 3 majors, 1 other major finals, and hasn’t reached the final of the French Open.

Ranking Performance:

Venus finished 3 times in the year end top 5, and 8 times in the year end top 10.
Sharapova finished 4 times in the year end top 5, and 5 times in the year end top 10.

Chris Chase sites that Sharapova didn’t squander her talent but Venus did. That’s one of the most stupid tennis comments out there.

SET: On a December 8 post called “Line judges beware: Serena Williams now owns a cricket bat”, Chris Chase was writing about the fact that during the Thanksgiving weekend in Barbados, organizers presented Serena with a commemorative cricket bat. He started with the following line – "What do you give a woman who has everything, including a temper problem? A cricket bat, apparently." That would seem hilarious except for the facts that (1) Serena doesn’t have everything, (2) Serena doesn’t have a temper problem, (3) Chris Chase doesn’t get the facts straight on what he writes on. He simply has to ask people who know Serena before saying she has a temper problem.

In the same post, he wrote the following stupid comments:
- The country of Barbados does not get US Open coverage. (I'm sure the country of Barbados has way more sensible people than Chris Chase and his ilk.)
- "I'm not saying Serena is going to use it (the cricket bat) for throat-shoving purposes upon a line judge who makes a bad call, but I'm not saying she won't either."

Chris Chase is telling the world that he doesn’t like the Williams sisters. His December 8 blog post is a stupid, stupid post. It’s more like a tabloid article than a respectable Yahoo blog post. Clearly, this is not the standard we expect from Yahoo writers.

MATCH: His latest blog post was his reaction on Serena being named as the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. Here, Chris Chase doesn’t hide his dislike for Serena Williams. The title of the post is “Undeservedly, Serena Williams earns AP's female athlete of year”. He makes several stupid comments:

Stupid Comment 1: "Serena's 2009 will be more remembered for that U.S. Open tirade rather than her successes." Wrong. 2009 will be remembered as the year Serena won her 10th and 11th grand slam tournaments, and that she finished the year as world #1. She was also awarded by the ITF as singles champion and part of the doubles champion team.

Stupid Comment 2: "To reward her for a season which included the ugliest tennis incident of the decade is a distinct blunder by voters." Here, Chris Chase makes his most stupid comment ever. There were 158 US newspaper editors who voted – 66 of them voted for Serena. Any other candidate didn’t receive more than 18 votes. Chris Chase wasn’t even qualified to vote. What blunder was he talking about?

Stupid Comment 3: "Her tennis year wasn't nearly great enough to outweigh her behavior on the court, particularly when there still doesn't seem to be any attrition on the part of Serena". Serena played 60+ matches for the year. She had one huge meltdown for sure, which I would never approve. Then again, there’s a positive side to it - the meltdown generated more interest in tennis, much more than the collective lifetime writings of Chris Chase. Serena did apologize to the lineswoman herself, with the lines person saying that the incident has been blown way out of proportion.

Stupid Comment 4: "Personally, I'd have voted for Zenyatta, the first female horse to ever win the Breeders' Cup Classic. She finished with 18 votes." To date, Chris Chase puny attention grabbing opinions have not received a single reaction from the Williams sisters. They’re not affected. So, Chris Chase does the next best thing: kiss-assing a female horse.