WINNING UGLY

Nearly 200,000 people filled the streets of Split, Croatia, to welcome newly crowned Wimbledon champion and native son Goran Ivanisevic home Tuesday.

Some of those people were probably ugly women and homosexual men. They were lucky Ivanisevic didn’t stop the celebration and have them ejected. Because that’s how Ivanisevic described a lineswoman and linesman who made questionable calls in his Wimbledon championship match Monday.

Have you heard the quote yet? Probably not.

It’s not as if someone really important, like Richard Williams, made the comments.

“First of all, that game, I was 30-love up,” Ivanisevic said. “I play some stupid shots. I make myself in trouble. Then first foot fault. Hit great serve. He missed it. First foot fault all tournament. That ugly, ugly lady--she was really ugly, very serious, you know. I was like kind of scared.

“Then I hit another second serve, huge. And that ball was on the line, was not even close. And that guy, he looks like a faggot little bit, you know. This hair all over him. He call it. I couldn’t believe he did it. Just, you know, in two seconds, I won point twice and I’m down 4-2. Then I got little crazy, you know.”

That’s what Ivanisevic said.

As troubling as the comments are, equally as troubling is the double standard that seems to exist.

Williams, father of Wimbledon women’s champion Venus and her quarterfinalist sister Serena, has been known to say stupid, ill-considered, mean-spirited things and it is always a big deal.

Imagine if, during her three-set victory over Justine Henin in the final, Venus had received a couple of questionable line calls. Imagine, had Richard been asked after the match about those calls, and he said what Ivanisevic said.

Headlines. We would have had headlines. Venus would have been hounded about what her father said. Richard would have been condemned.

And rightly so. Whether said in anger or as a joke or simply out of emotion, certain words and descriptions are especially hurtful and people who feel free to say them should also be prepared to deal with angry criticism.

We give Williams too much attention sometimes and now we’ve given Ivanisevic too little.

After Ivanisevic’s stunning and emotional five-set victory over Pat Rafter in a match played Monday instead of Sunday because of rain, and in front of a crowd of true, loud, painted-faced, stuffed-animal-carrying fans who had camped out all night for tickets that rarely go on public sale, Ivanisevic served the last four points with tears in his eyes, then ran to grab his father in a weepy hug.

But about 45 minutes later, he was asked about a controversial sequence in the fourth set, when he was called first for a foot fault and then had the next serve called out when it seemed to kick up a puff of chalk, meaning the ball had hit a line and was good. The calls were made on a break point. The resultant service break cost Ivanisevic the fourth set.

Before the excuses start, understand that Ivanisevic was speaking nearly an hour after the match. He was at a formal news conference. A very proper British gentleman conducts the interview. All Wimbledon news conferences are recorded by a stenographer and transcripts are distributed to the media and via the Wimbledon Web site.

In other words, these descriptions of a lineswoman and linesman were not made in the heat of the moment. It was not, as was the infamous John Rocker interview, conducted between only one journalist and one athlete.

There was no outrage Tuesday, though. Ivanisevic’s comments were either not reported or barely so in most of the stories written from Wimbledon on Monday.

In the Los Angeles Times, there was no mention of the quote. In the New York Times, it was in the 16th paragraph of the main story. The Chicago Tribune referred only to Ivanisevic’s “rude” comments about officials.

The Washington Post waited until four paragraphs from the bottom of a story to say that “in his postmatch news conference, Ivanisevic called one of the lineswomen involved in the point ‘ugly’ and used a derogatory comment to refer to another official.”

Luckily, according to nearly all media accounts, his anger at the officials didn’t last long or cost him victory.

Story after story described Ivanisevic’s “charmingly fractured English,” and recounted the many years Ivanisevic has played at Wimbledon and lost, told of Ivanisevic’s three runner-up finishes, how he felt like killing himself after a 1998 loss to Pete Sampras. We knew fully and frequently how Ivanisevic offered up this win to the late Drazen Petrovic, the Croatian basketball star who had been killed in a car accident nine years ago and at whose funeral Ivanisevic was a pallbearer.

It’s hard to dislike Ivanisevic. A confession here: With two Croatian grandparents and a passion for writing tennis, with countless chances to laugh and cry with Ivanisevic, I shed a tear when Goran ran to see his father.

But as Ivanisevic found out Monday, it is still very easy to thoughtlessly denigrate homosexuals and women, especially when you are a man who makes people laugh and cry.

You can blame the media for this. We don’t want to ruin a good story.

The crazy crowd, the crazier Croatian, the unseeded, nearly uninvited underdog clawing to a stunning victory. What a great story. Let’s not ruin it with the bad stuff. Who would want to ruin the best moment of this man’s life?

And if these quotes had come from someone else, someone not so goofy and lovable, someone easier to criticize, then they’d have been a big deal.

If sometimes the world seems too politically correct for your tastes, then maybe it seems OK to dismiss what the new Wimbledon gentleman’s champion said. Some in the news conference giggled. One British paper characterized Ivanisevic’s comments as a joke and nothing more.

After the men’s semifinals, Andre Agassi was also upset with a lineswoman, who had reported him for using an audible obscenity late in the fifth set. Asked if he felt this was unfair, Agassi said, “Yeah, big time. Big time. I blame her husband for that.”

Giggles all around again. Hardly any commotion made about the comment either.

Why is it so easy for Agassi, 30, and Ivanisevic, 29, to characterize people in despicable ways? Is it that the male athletes expect to deal only with beautiful women and macho men? Is it because they live in a protected world, traveling in closed circles and hardly ever are taken to task for anything?

Is it because 200,000 people will forget everything to cheer for them? Even the ugly women and homosexual men?

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.