A much better day for Serena Williams in the U.S. Open Monday, wasn’t it? She and her big sister won the doubles title, and no line judges were threatened.

Plus, she said she was sorry for the meltdown. She seemed to mean it. “I want to make it clear as possible,” her statement began. She apologized to the target of her wrath, to her opponent, to anyone watching. And let’s assume that included any corporate sponsors.
Very good. Very smart. But that can’t be the end of it.
The crowd at Flushing Meadows booed when she was asked about the matter Monday after her title match. They’d seen good tennis, they wanted everything else to go away.
But it can’t. Sport has to mean more than saying you’re sorry, then blowing out your doubles opponent.
Let’s run the replay from her singles semifinals one more time.
Here’s the queen of American tennis, unhinged about a terrible (bleep) foot fault call, moving ominously toward the poor (bleep) lady who made it, while holding up her racket as if it were a samurai sword, barking about wanting to take the (bleep) tennis ball and force feed it to the lineswoman as if it were a bratwurst.
Or something like that.
Let’s all imagine now what would happen if Albert Pujols waved his bat menacingly at an umpire, or Kobe Bryant stormed off the court and screamed in the face of a referee that he’d like to shove an official regulation basketball down his throat.
Guess what major league baseball or the NBA would do? Right. So remind us again why Williams hasn’t been suspended yet? Sorry, but a fine for pocket change doesn’t quite get it done, nor a well-crafted apology, delivered 24 hours late.
Can’t work that way in civilized sport. Those games we watch, they’re still supposed to be civilized, right? And not just for the winners.
Temper tantrums? Those can be lived with. What would John McEnroe’s legacy be without them?
Heated disagreement about a call? They happen. Bobby Cox, manager and patron saint of the Atlanta Braves, has been thrown out of 150 major league baseball games.
Bad words? Tolerable, if unflattering. Tiger Woods’ on-course vocabulary can be bluer than the Pacific, though it is often directed toward his own wayward 6-irons, or the occasional offending photographer.
But threaten the officials? Never, ever. Do that, and pretty soon, you’re European soccer.
A line was crossed here. It cannot be rationalized or shrugged away with snappy lines. It must be punished, but first it must be recognized.
One wonders if tennis - a sport that demands disciplined silence from spectators but accepts a boisterous past of players taking off after officials - even understands where the line is. A newspaper in the United Kingdom rated tennis’ all-time tantrums Monday, and Williams finished way down in 10th. Her blowup was the Pittsburgh Pirates of meltdowns.
But, to borrow words from Williams’ apology, this should be as clear as possible: Her words and her body language directly threatened an official.
She shouldn’t have played Monday. That would have been the end of it. There would have been a fine, a penalty, an apology. Done and done. Everybody move on. Instead, the investigation and debate might take weeks.
A mother came back from retirement and changing diapers to win the U.S. Open. Tennis didn’t need this to get its share of headlines on the same weekend the NFL opened.
Speaking of headlines, here’s one from the October cover of the magazine Success: “Champion on the court and off.” It is next to a picture of Serena Williams. She is quoted in the story about her angry reactions to losing when she was younger — “very unprofessional,” she called them.
“I’m just learning not to show it,” she said.
A work in progress, apparently.
That was the gold standard for U.S. women’s tennis imploding in primetime the other night. The icon. The role model. She still is.
But she threatened an official.
Go meekly down that road, and a sport has failed itself.