Tennis makes fine point with Serena Williams, if only a small one

The news of the day is not that tennis fined Serena Williams. It is that tennis did something.

For many, including this typist, the action was a shocker. Not the size of the fine, the existence of one.

This is a sport that tiptoes around its superstars like lion trainers at the zoo during feeding time. Outbursts such as Williams’ tirade of intimidation against a lineswoman in the semifinals of this year’s U.S. Open usually send the mice in blazers scurrying to the basement. Tennis runs via a dysfunctional collection of Grand Slam officials, men’s and women’s tour officials, men’s and women’s tournament directors and players’ agents. Each has an agenda and, despite efforts to demonstrate the contrary to the public, never the twain shall meet.

When Williams made her full-throated projection to the lineswoman, in front of a stadium crowd of 23,000 and an international television audience of many millions, that she had a destination for the tennis ball she held in her hand, it became a moment tough to swallow for tennis officialdom.

This was one of the sport’s main meal tickets, a player who had won 11 Grand Slam titles, would finish the season with a women’s tour-record $6.5 million in winnings and the No. 1 ranking.

Oh, my. What to do now? Cue the hand-wringing.

Now, 11 weeks after Williams’ angry show at match point against eventual champion Kim Clijsters, tennis has announced that Williams will be assessed the largest fine in the sport’s history for violation of its “aggravated behavior” rule. She has written a check for $82,500, and the arithmetic goes as follows:

* Her total fine is $175,000.

* She was originally fined $10,000 shortly after the incident.

* Subtract the $10,000 from the $175,000 and her latest penalty becomes $165,000.

* But she has to pay only half of that, contingent upon her avoiding any other major violation at any Grand Slam event in the next two years. Tennis, laughably wanting to sound like tough cops, is calling that Serena’s two-year probation. If she violates that, she will be asked for another check of $82,500.

* The $175,000, the largest fine in tennis since Jeff Tarango and his wife took on a chair umpire at Wimbledon in 1996 and he was assessed $48,000, was determined by subtracting the difference between quarterfinal and semifinal money at this year’s Open.

* At the U.S. Open, Williams earned $350,000 by reaching the singles semifinals, and $210,000 more as her share of her doubles title with sister Venus. So her U.S. Open pay of $560,000 is now down to $467,500, with the original $10,000 fine and the current $82,500 assessment.

* The $92,500 out-of-pocket fee she has paid amounts to slightly more than 1% of her $6.5 million in 2009 purses.

Money is not the biggest issue. Action by tennis is.

Granted, the pressures the sport faced were imposing. Trying to corral all the divergent interests on a daily basis is like herding cattle with Yorkshire terriers. This extra wrinkle further complicated things.

As soon as the incident occurred, there was much sentiment for having Serena and Venus defaulted from the doubles final two days later. Tennis passed on that. As the 11-week passage of time on the final penalty shows, two days is just too fast for tennis, and perhaps correctly so.

But 11 weeks is silly to the other extreme. This investigation wasn’t about the Hope Diamond. This was a tennis player, throwing an obscenity-laced hissy fit, with TV cameras rolling and microphones all over the place and at least 50 reporters from around the world sitting in a press section within 100 feet of the incident. Inspector Clouseau couldn’t have messed this one up.

But once the politics of tennis apparently kicked in, the process slowed to a crawl. That brought the expectation of the norm: They wouldn’t dare do anything to Serena. They would hope everybody just forgets. They would not mess with the marquee player on a women’s tour that all too often features fragile stars, tournament dropouts, mid-match calls for trainers and potty breaks.

You can almost see 10 well-dressed, middle-age people, sitting around a table in a boardroom, pondering this decision, and one of them gasping, “Oh, my. If we make Serena too angry, that would leave us with, well, Dinara Safina!”

Easy call after that. Do something, but make it gentle.

So, tennis stood up. Kind of. It took action that it thought wouldn’t infuriate one of its biggest stars and would still speak to that part of the public offended by what she did.

For a sport whose spine tends toward mushy, give it credit. About a B-minus.

As for Williams, give her credit for being predictable. This was one more chance for her to say, upon further review, that what she did was ugly and embarrassing and she was sorry. She passed. Again.

Her statement was your basic athlete’s put-this-behind-me routine.

“I am thankful that we now have closure on the incident and we can all move forward,” she said.

At least tennis moved forward, as long as you count baby steps.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com