Serena Williams was portrayed as an angry baby in a cartoon published in the Australian newspaper the Herald Sun on Monday, two days after the 23-time Grand Slam tennis champion lost her cool in a dramatic US Open final. 
 
 Williams was given three code violations during her straight-sets loss to Naomi Osaka on Saturday. 
 
 The first violation was for coaching, which Williams argued against. "I don't cheat to win — I'd rather lose," she said. 
 
 Williams was later given a violation for smashing her racket, costing her a point. Her third violation, for calling the umpire Carlos Ramos a "thief," cost her a game. 
 
 She repeatedly demanded an apology from Ramos. Speaking with the referee to protest Ramos' call, she argued that male players weren't punished for similar, or worse, actions. "Because I'm a woman, you're going to take this away from me?" she said. 
 
 Williams was fined $17,000, which is deducted from her prize money of $1.85 million as the tournament's runner-up, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 In response, the Herald Sun's editorial cartoonist, Mark Knight, lampooned Williams in his latest piece. 
 
 Williams is shown with grotesque features including an oversize nose and lips and is pictured jumping up and down with a broken racket and a pacifier nearby, insinuating that Williams acted like a baby having a temper tantrum during the final. 
 
 The cartoon also pictures 20-year-old Osaka, one of the rising stars in women's tennis, in the background, where the umpire tells her: "Can you just let her win?" 
 
 Here is the cartoon: 
 
 The cartoon provoked an angry response on Twitter, where some users have also commented on how Osaka appears to be portrayed as a white, blond woman in the drawing. 
 
 "Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Williams' behaviour, I really don't like that cartoon at all," one Twitter user said. "Why is Naomi Osaka suddenly transformed into a white, blonde player? Why is Carlos Ramos white too? And why are Serena Williams' facial features distorted like that?" 
 
 Another Twitter user said: "Thank you for this cartoon. I will be sure to use it when I write about how Black women are treated and characterized for speaking up for themselves. The way you have drawn both women speaks volumes about who you are and how you feel about Black women. Shame." 
 
 A polarizing US Open final 
 
 While Osaka beat Williams in straight sets, 6-2, 6-4, headlines did not focus on her first major win, instead fixating on Williams' hat trick of code violations. 
 
 The decision to reprimand Williams polarized the tennis industry and wider sporting press, especially after Williams claimed she had been treated differently than a male tennis player would have been. Ben Rothenberg, a freelance journalist for The New York Times, argued on Twitter that all sanctions were fair. 
 
 The US tennis great Billie Jean King, however, suggested Williams had indeed identified a double standard in tennis. ||||| J.K. Rowling Blasts 'Racist' Serena Newspaper Cartoon 
 
 J.K. Rowling Blasts 'Racist' Serena Williams Newspaper Cartoon 
 
 Breaking News 
 
 This is not good. 
 
 A newspaper in Australia is catching A LOT of heat over a cartoon that was trying to spoof Serena Williams' incident at the U.S. Open -- because it's racist as hell. 
 
 The cartoon -- drawn by Mark Knight (editorial cartoonist for the Herald Sun newspaper) -- shows the tennis superstar stomping on her racket. 
 
 But, let's get serious, it looks like a Jim Crow-era, Sambo-style caricature of a black person -- not Serena Williams. 
 
 The cartoon has been blasted by athletes and celebs including J.K. Rowling who said, "Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop." 
 
 ESPN's Jemele Hill noted the racism is "About as subtle as Fran Drescher’s voice." 
 
 So far, it doesn't seem like the Herald Sun is backing down -- they retweeted the image and haven't pulled it. 
 
 At least, not yet. 
 
 As we reported ... Serena was penalized several times during Saturday's U.S. Open finals match against Naomi Osaka. Serena went off on the judge claiming he was a "thief" who stole a point from her. 
 
 The judge then penalized Serena a game for the "verbal abuse." Williams continued to go off on the guy to other tournament officials claiming the judge would never treat a man that way. ||||| J.K. Rowling ಮರುಟ್ವೀಟಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ 
 
 Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop. https://t.co/YOxVMuTXEC ||||| Nine days before she beat Serena Williams in the finals of the U.S. Open, Naomi Osaka already seemed bored talking about her own life story. 
 
 “Um, I think everybody knows this by now,” she said last month, with a small laugh. “Like I grew up in New York until I was 8 or 9 and then I moved to Florida, so…” She shrugged. 
 
 It was a somewhat oversimplified version of the rising tennis star’s unusual story: Her father, Leonard Francois, is Haitian; her mother, Tamaki Osaka, is Japanese. The two met in Hokkaido when Francois, then a college student in New York, was visiting the island. According to a recent profile in the New York Times Magazine, Tamaki Osaka’s father accused her of bringing disgrace on the family when he learned that she was dating a black foreigner, and the two moved to Osaka, Japan’s second largest city. It was while they were living there that the future tennis star was born. 
 
 Yes, her last name is the same as the city of her birth, which is another thing that she’s clearly tired of talking about. 
 
 “You ready?” she said when a reporter asked about it on Saturday. “We’re recycling a joke from 2014! Everyone who was born in Osaka, their last name is Osaka.” 
 
 “I never know what to do when someone asks me where I’m from,” Osaka tweeted in May 2017. “I just say FL, because saying Japan starts an unnecessary conversation.” 
 
 She may be tired of the questions about her complicated identity, but given her growing celebrity, they’re unlikely to go away anytime soon. The 20-year-old is currently ranked seventh in the world, and her victory on Saturday made her Japan’s first Grand Slam champion. She’s also believed to be the first Grand Slam winner of Haitian descent. “At the U.S. Open, Naomi Osaka looks like the next best player in the world,” read one headline in the New Yorker. 
 
 On Saturday, Osaka inadvertently found herself in the middle of a raging controversy after umpire Carlos Ramos decided to penalize Williams for her tone of voice during their match. Because of his widely criticized call, Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins wrote, “we will never know whether young Osaka really won the 2018 U.S. Open or had it handed to her by a man who was going to make Serena Williams feel his power.” 
 
 Yet for all the outpouring of anger that followed, virtually none of it was directed at Osaka, who instead was praised for her humility. At the trophy presentation, she cried, telling the crowd, “I’m sorry it had to end like this.” 
 
 Then, she turned to Williams and bowed to her, saying, “I’m really grateful I was able to play with you.” 
 
 Osaka has frequently described Williams, the winner of 23 Grand Slams, as her idol and inspiration. And like Williams, she was trained primarily by her father, along with her older sister Mari, who is also a professional tennis player. 
 
 “I was 3 when I started playing tennis,” she told Bleacher Report last month. “It’s the only thing I’ve really known and the thing that I’m best at.” 
 
 By then, her parents had left Japan and moved to Long Island to be closer to Francois’s family. Several years later, they would move to South Florida, where many of the country’s best young tennis players are trained. Broward County, where they settled, also has a sizable Haitian population — Creole is the third-most common language after English and Spanish in the county, appearing on ads on buses and official government notices. Osaka’s upbringing, she’s said in interviews, was influenced by both Japanese and Haitian culture. When she talks, she sounds like any other 20-year-old from Florida. Asked about her career goals in 2016, she replied, “To be the very best, like no one ever was. That’s a Pokemon quote, I’m sorry. That’s the Pokemon theme song. ” 
 
 “She has some of the purest raw power in the game, a serve that she can use to dictate points and a whipping forehand swing that generates phenomenal racket head speed,” Louisa Thomas wrote in Racquet magazine. “Even as a 16-year-old, she’d clocked forehands at over a hundred miles an hour.” 
 
 When Osaka turned pro in 2013, her dual citizenship meant that she had a choice between playing for Japan or the United States. Her father chose Japan, thinking it would open up more opportunities for her. 
 
 The country is fairly homogeneous and Osaka, as a half-black woman, stood out. “I could see the shock on people’s faces,” she told Racquet magazine in March, remembering her first tournaments. 
 
 [Japan’s half-black Miss Universe says discrimination gives her ‘extra motivation’] 
 
 After the 2016 Australian Open, Osaka commented that it was “touching” that there were Japanese flags in the stand, and Japanese fans cheering for her. “I always think that they’re surprised that I’m Japanese,” she explained. 
 
 But Osaka is not entirely comfortable speaking in Japanese, which is understandable, considering that she left the country as a toddler. At news conferences last week, she took questions in Japanese but replied to most of them in English. Yet, her posts on Twitter and Instagram alternate between the two languages. 
 
 “I don’t know if you guys know this but I can understand most Japanese and I speak when I want to,” she tweeted in January, adding, “that applies to my family and friends.” 
 
 “Thank you for your continuous support always,” she told fans on her website, which is available in both languages. “I will do my best on every game! And I will keep trying hard to speak better Japanese.” 
 
 With her Grand Slam win, Osaka has become an overnight sensation in Japan. One teacher in the city of Kobe told the Associated Press that Osaka’s post-match comments were “so cool and yet so Japanese.” But the spate of headlines referring to her as the first Japanese woman to win the championship has also made some fans feel like her black identity is being erased. 
 
 Naomi Osaka is Japanese-Haitian, not just Japanese. And she’ll quickly remind you about that. But reporters continue to diminish her Haitian identity smh. 🇭🇹🇯🇵 — Jermaine Scott (@itsjermaine) September 8, 2018 
 
 Why are they only focusing on @Naomi_Osaka_ ‘s Japanese heritage and not a mention of her Haitian background? She’s proud of both and she’s the “first” for both countries ...hummm? pic.twitter.com/K2y19mpJY5 — Alberto B Mendoza (@AlbertoBNAHJ) September 9, 2018 
 
 Osaka, for her part, has repeatedly reminded reporters that she is Japanese and Haitian. But she doesn’t seem to get asked about her Haitian side as often. 
 
 “Talk about your relationship with Japanese culture and U.S. culture,” one reporter asked her on Wednesday, following Osaka’s quarterfinal victory. “How did both cultures make you who you are?” 
 
 “My dad’s Haitian, so I grew up in a Haitian household in New York,” Osaka reminded her. “I lived with my grandma. And my mom’s Japanese and I grew up with the Japanese culture too, and if you’re saying American, I guess because I lived in America, I also have that too . . . I hope I answered your question. I don’t know.” 
 
 It might not be her favorite subject, or one that she’s completely comfortable discussing, but Osaka is aware that her multicultural background means that she’s well positioned to become an international celebrity. At the 2016 Australian Open, she was asked why she had so many fans. 
 
 “Probably because they think I’m interesting,” she told reporters. “Maybe it’s because they can’t really pinpoint what I am, so it’s like anybody can cheer for me.” 
 
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 ‘We’re the only ones who understand our situation’: Wives and girlfriends of men in wheelchairs form unique sisterhood 
 
 Homecoming queen swaps tiara for her football helmet, kicks winning point before frenzied crowd ||||| The temperature in Boca Raton had soared above 90 degrees, but on a side court at the Evert Tennis Academy, Naomi Osaka was just digging into one of her last training sessions before the summer hardcourt season. Wearing leggings and a tank top — her magnificent mane of frizzy blond-tinted hair emerging from the back of her Adidas cap — the 20-year-old smacked crisp topspin groundstrokes with her coach, Sascha Bajin, a German of Serb descent best known for working as Serena Williams’s hitting partner for eight years. On the sideline, Osaka’s Japanese mother, Tamaki, sat in the shade in a denim jumpsuit and sunglasses, her daughter’s miniature Australian shepherd sitting by her feet. Pacing on the grass alongside the court was her Haitian-born father, Leonard Francois, a taciturn man in a baseball cap who trained her from age 3 and still tracks nearly every shot she hits. 
 
 Some version of this simple scene — dutiful parents, a gifted child, the metronomic thump of a ball — plays out every day at tennis courts and sports fields across the world. Only in this case, the parents’ unlikely union has led to the emergence of one of the most intriguing young stars in sports today: an athlete who has grown up in one place (the United States), represents another (Japan) and, for some, symbolizes something as large as the world’s multicultural future. In playing under the flag of an island nation noted for its racial homogeneity, Osaka challenges assumptions about whether and under what circumstances a biracial person might be accepted as truly Japanese. For her part, Osaka, shy and quirky, with a penchant for unexpected candor, seems focused solely on becoming the next Serena. Her ambition, she once told a reporter, was “to be the very best, like no one ever was.” After a beat, realizing that her interlocutor was not tuned to her frequency, she explained: “I’m sorry; that’s the Pokémon theme song. But, yeah, to be the very best, and go as far as I can go.” 
 
 On this searing afternoon, Osaka was amping up the velocity of her shots. “Ninety seconds!” shouted her conditioning coach, Abdul Sillah, looking at his stopwatch. Osaka and Bajin were halfway through their first three-minute drill, a baseline rally that lasts about 10 times longer than an average exchange in a match. The drill is meant to make the legs and lungs burn without affecting the pace and placement of the athlete’s groundstrokes. It also happens to goad Osaka’s competitive pride. After about 80 shots, by my count, neither she nor Bajin had missed. As the clock slogged on — “Two minutes!” Sillah said, then “Two and a half minutes!” — it was clear that each was trying to make the other crack. Osaka let out a shriek as she scrambled to return one of his deep shots down the line. As the last seconds ticked away, Osaka crushed a forehand crosscourt for a winner. “I hit with Serena almost every day for eight years, and Naomi’s weapons are just as big,” Bajin says. “She’s not afraid of center stage, either, and that’s why I believe she has greatness within her.” 
 
 As the U.S. Open begins this week, Osaka may be a premature pick to lift this year’s trophy, but the prospect also wouldn’t be entirely outlandish. At 20, she is the youngest woman in the world’s Top 20 — and Japan’s highest-ranked female player in more than a decade. Serena Williams declared two years ago that Osaka was “very dangerous.” So it wasn’t a complete surprise when she put together a spectacular run in March at Indian Wells, in California, demolishing three current or former world No.1s on the way to her first W.T.A. title. Those upsets catapulted her up the rankings, from No. 68 at the end of 2017 to 17 by early August. “Ever since I can remember, I played better against bigger players on bigger courts,” she told me, her high, soft voice a contrast to the ferocity she displays on court. Tsuyoshi Yoshitani, a sports reporter with Kyodo News, says: “Naomi is like no Japanese player ever before. I think she will be the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam.”
– Serena Williams' loss to Naomi Osaka over the weekend at the US Open continues to generate headlines beyond the world of sports. One of the buzzier stories Monday concerned a cartoon—see it here—that it appeared in the Herald Sun of Australia, reports Business Insider. It depicts Williams, with exaggerated features, throwing a tantrum. In the view of TMZ, "it looks like a Jim Crow-era, Sambo-style caricature of a black person—not Serena Williams," and plenty of people agreed, including JK Rowling. "Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop," she wrote. Others found it strange that the cartoonist made Osaka and the ump white, when neither are. Related coverage: Catching up: If you missed it, Williams accused ump Carlos Ramos of being a "liar" and a "thief" for docking her a point after what he deemed to be illegal communication between Williams and her coach. As she criticized him and demanded an apology, he penalized her a full game. Williams was ultimately fined $17,000. Lost in all this: The controversy has overshadowed the win by Osaka and the 20-year-old's remarkable journey. Her mother is Japanese and her father Haitian, notes the Washington Post, which makes her Japan's first Grand Slam champ. The New York Times recently profiled her, wondering whether she can "burst Japan's expectations of what it means to be Japanese."