Serena Williams claims to be victim a of sexism for her bust-up with Carlos Ramos

Former world number one, Serena Williams was the talk of the Tennis town following her meltdown during last month’s US Open women’s singles final against Japan’s Naomi Osaka. As Osaka became the first woman from Japan to win a grand slam by beating Williams by a scoreline of 6-2, 6-4, Serena hogged all the limelight by getting involved in a controversial argument with the chair umpire during the course of the game.

Now, Williams has revealed that although she has been trying to “move on” from that meltdown she was still confused at her coach’s admission that he illegally signaled to her. In a recent interview with Australia’s Channel Ten, the American legend suggested that a male player would not have been treated the same way as she was treated.

“Right now we are not, as it’s proven, in that same position,” she said in an interview that aired late Sunday. Women cannot get away with even half of what a guy can do. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m just trying most of all to recover from that and move on,” Williams told Channel Ten.

A win at the US Open would have taken Williams to a total of 24 Grand Slams and could have seen her equal Australian Margaret Court’s all-time record. The altercation, which involved Portuguese umpire Ramos, began when Williams was issued a warning for coaching that her coach, who was seated in the player’s box, Patrick Mouratoglou confessed to doing.

However, the 23-time grand slam winner claimed she had not seen her French coach make any sort of a gesture and called his subsequent admission “a really confusing moment”.

“I asked him ‘what are you talking about you were coaching?’ We don’t have signals, we’ve never had signals. He said he made a motion, and I said, ‘OK so you made a motion and now you’re telling people you were coaching me?’. That doesn’t make sense. Why would you say that?” added Williams.