BOSTON — When I was a young teen in the early 1960s and an aspiring tennis player, I went to my first national championship.

What I came away with was not at all what I expected — some useful tennis pointers — but rather a lesson about the limits of patriotism, or at least my limits, in the realm of sports.

This was back in the days when doubles was a separate event from singles and almost as big, attracting all the game’s luminaries. Aussies had dominated the tournament in recent years, with seven different pairs from Down Under winning the men’s title in the ’50s.

We were going, my father explained, to root for the rising American challengers, an odd, Mutt-and-Jeff pairing of Chuck McKinley, a fiery Texas runt, and Dennis Ralston, a tall, Californian with country-club looks.

While they may have appeared different, the two Americans shared one trait: fiery tempers that would lead to explosive tirades and tantrums. (McKinley’s once led to a four-month suspension after he threw his racquet into the stands during a Davis Cup match.)

Despite my father’s urgings and the success of the American stars — they would win three double titles in the early ’60s — I found their adolescent behavior off-putting. It reminded me of one peevish player in my own circle, whom we had saddled with the unflattering nickname of “the weasel.”

And I sure wasn’t going to cheer for any weasels, particularly when the alternative was a remarkable string of stylish, gentlemanly and good-humored Aussies like Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Roy Emerson, Neale Fraser, Fred Stolle, John Newcombe and Tony Roche.

That was the first time my dad and I clashed over notions of patriotism, a divide that would become a chasm not too many years later at the height of the Vietnam War. But in the ensuing years, it would only manifest itself once a year at the National Doubles, where I would root against McKinley and Ralston. They were not the first Americans to manifest a bit too much temperament on the court. But they seemed to be the prototype for a succession of American stars, a brat pack that included top Yanks like Clark Graebner and Cliff Richey. And a decade later, the American brat style was going full-bore and full-boor, led by Jimmy Connors, then refined by John McEnroe and later embraced by a young Andre Agassi.

All the weapons they employed — racquet-tossing, profanity, verbal abuse of officials — were justified because they were constantly being victimized by bad calls and rulings that, with no technology to back them up, stoked their sense of grievance and, quite possibly, fueled their games.

Not all American tennis stars behaved that way; Stan Smith, Arthur Ashe, Pete Sampras and, in a welcome case of reform, the later-years Agassi, all played with class. But with the exception of one crazed Romanian star, Ilie Nastase, the bad behaivor was pretty much uniquely American, cheered on by U.S. fans that embraced the bad-boy antics as virtues, a reflection of American pugnaciousness and pluck in the face of adversity.

Whatever the genesis of (or gene for) this unruly behavior in what once was regarded as a gentleman’s game, American women seemed immune to it. Whatever suffering they endured — and there was a lot of burnout, parental abuse and other afflictions in the ladies game — the U.S. women stars behaved well on the court and were easy to root for.

I guess it could be viewed as some kind of gender progress, though I view it as regression, that America’s number one woman star, Serena Williams, went the fully brat route in her losing final at the U.S. Open — and broke not a racquet but entirely new ground. Penalized at an inopportune moment in the match for a foot fault, Williams unleashed a profane tirade against the linesman, apparently threatening her with bodily harm, and to punctuate the point menaced the lady with her racquet.

In the aftermath, Williams couldn’t even muster an apology, explaining to her fans that her behavior simply reflected her extraordinary passion for the game and for winning. Which is something akin to an abusive spouse defending his actions as an outgrowth of his passion for marriage. A day later, though, after winning the Open doubles with her sister, Venus, Williams apologize “sincerely” to first of all the official and then to everyone else “for my inappropriate outburst.”

Tennis’s governing body has said it will investigate. Though Williams has generally been as much an exemplar as a champion, any fine — even a monster fine — would be a hollow gesture against the wealthy tennis champ.

Limited precedent indicates that such unruly and vile behavior warrants a suspension, possibly even one that would include next year’s Open. But in hard economic times when sports, particularly women’s sports, are suffering, it is a daunting prospect to voluntarily sideline the game’s top attraction. And the Williams sisters have a history, when they feel aggrieved, of picking up their balls and going home. They haven’t returned to one of the game’s biggest tournaments, Indian Wells, Ca., since 2001 when their dad, Richard Williams, accused the crowd of racism (“the worst act of prejudice I’ve seen since they killed Martin Luther King”) after fans booed Venus for an injury withdrawal from her semi-final match against Serena.

Tennis now finds itself between the proverbial rock and a hard place. But maybe it should have gone there a long time ago. I for one have been waiting some 50 years to find out whether tennis stands for anything more than the match results.