A low blow from Down Under

 Women never like to admit this (some women, that is), but chauvinism is not gender specific. It's a door that swings two ways, even if most of the time it admittedly only swings the one.

Which is a long-way-around-the-barn way of saying the Old Man Shaking His Fist At Clouds is always presented as exclusively male, and that's unfair. Sometimes Old Women shake their fists at clouds, too.

May we enter into evidence one Margaret Court, who is 80 years old and wants to know why These Kids Today are so darn disrespectful.

The doyenne of Australian tennis reminded us the other day that she won 24 Grand Slams, one more than Serena Williams, whose exit from the tennis scene in New York last weekend brought the tennis world to its feet, not to say to tears. Hailed as the GOAT of women's tennis and a splendid representative of her sport,  she went out fighting in a three-set loss to Ajla Tomljanovic in which she fought off five match points before losing.

And then Dame Margaret opened her mouth.

Her reaction in an interview with the Daily Telegraph was to crab that she's never gotten her due as the all-time Grand Slam champion, particularly from Serena. She admires Serena, she says, but Serena has never admired her. She said Serena also showed bad form in not doing more to acknowledge Tomljanovic, herself an Aussie.

As John McEnroe once said: You cannot be serious.

But she was, and then she kept talking to prove it. A conservative Christian of the ilk that  loves to play pretend martyr, she said Australia has never accorded her the acclaim she deserves because of her Christian beliefs. Her countrymen and women didn't like that she opposed gay marriage in Australia, and so they've snubbed her because of it.

Left unacknowledged, as always, is the fact she's used her religious beliefs to snub  Australians of whom she disapproves, too. And in a far more hurtful way.

Undeterred, Court went on to claim tennis was a much tougher go in her day, which largely happened during the amateur era. Serena had it easier, she said, and besides, Serena played longer. Plus, Court won Grand Slams after she married and had a baby, and Serena didn't.

"Players today don't honor the past of the game," Court groused, apparently missing the Serena/Billie Jean King lovefest in New York last week.

"The honor has not been there for what I did do," she said.

"I would love to have played in this era. It's so much easier," she also said.

Altogether now: Back in MY day ...

And then the usual anecdote about walking two miles, uphill, in waist-deep snow, just to get to practice.

Shake that fist, Margaret. Shake it good.