Serena doesn’t handle losing with grace

NEW YORK -- The match was competitive and entertaining. The aftermath petty and ugly.

Serena Williams got bounced out of the U.S. Open tennis tournament here Tuesday night, by No. 1 Justine Henin of Belgium, who ran faster, hit better and deserved to win. The score was 7-6 (3), 6-1, and a stadium full of more than 23,000 in Arthur Ashe did its best to root Williams on, she being from the good ‘ol USA.

For Williams, it was the loss of a tennis match. Sure, a big match and big tournament worth big stature. But nobody died, nobody was even injured and Williams presumably has some of that nearly $18 million she has won as a player to help ease the sting of defeat.

But if anybody was expecting perspective afterward, or maybe a gracious nod to a better effort by an opponent, forget it. We had sullen Serena. Snippy Serena. Snarly Serena.

She met the media afterward like a rattlesnake meets a ground squirrel. Her answers were more like hisses, her stated reasons for the loss sounding like a poor loser.

Some samples: “I just think she made a lot of lucky shots.”

And: “I really don’t feel like talking about it. It’s like I don’t want to get fined. That’s the only reason I came. I can’t afford to pay the fines because I keep losing.”

She was asked if she thought her fitness was an issue.

“I’m very fit,” she snapped. “I can run for hours.”

She was asked if her assessment was that she lost, rather than Henin won.

“I think that’s usually the case with me,” she said, “that it’s for me to win or lose.”

Could she explain what went wrong?

“No I can’t,” she said.

What she meant was, No I won’t.

The words came snipping out from under the bill of a lowered baseball cap. Eye contact was nonexistent.

Add angry body language to angry words and you get an angry message, one much angrier than the situation dictated. She is 25 years old, has played nearly 600 tour matches and done news conferences after each one. It’s part of the deal. It’s how the sport promotes itself.

She has been No. 1, won eight major tournaments, been the toast of the town and a nation of tennis fans who have loved her and embraced her from the start, despite her general self-centered attitude and dismissive nature toward opponents.

She knows the media is the messenger and she knows it will send one. Tuesday night’s message, in a nutshell: Serena Williams lost a tennis match and acted like a baby afterward. Maybe somebody can spare an extra pacifier.

She is a public figure. This is not new to her, nor can it be lost on her. The nearly $18 million she has won is from the public doles: sponsors who sell their goods to an interested public; television that exists on the advertising that spurs the public to buy; people who buy tickets to come out and watch.

Sadly, the Williams’ post-match hissy fit marred an otherwise exceptional night for the sport. From nights like this, tennis thrives and grows. Nights like this move the bar higher for a sport that needs that.

At 7:45 p.m., the courtyard in front of the Ashe Stadium was packed. Novak Djokovic was finishing up his four-set win, the last match from the day session, and the night crowd awaited that ending in cloudless skies and perfectly warm temperatures moderated by a gentle breeze. Thousands crowded around the pretty plaza fountains as the big screen on the side of the stadium showed them the action.

Others wandered to nearby cafes for a beer, or to the tables with awnings near the practice courts, where others were lined four and five rows deep to watch Andy Roddick practice under the watchful eye of a legend, his coach, Jimmy Connors.

The Big Apple was out in force, or at least a good-sized bite of it.

The rest of the country sees these great nights here and it gets the 3.5 player in Keokuk, Iowa, all fired up. The U.S. Open, like all four of the Grand Slams events, is both a license to print money -- $1 million a day on the sale of hamburgers alone, by one estimate -- and an annual mandate to get its sport higher on that pedestal. The US Tennis Assn. is doing that better than ever here, with perfect weather, huge crowds, a great facility and a good show daily.

Unfortunately, the news of this night will also include clips of a sulking Serena Williams on SportsCenter and elsewhere.

Bad form. Bad for the sport that feeds her.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.