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Even Serena Williams

zuzu

It’s not just the grass courts and the strawberries and cream at Wimbledon that are throwbacks to the past. It’s the payscale, too.

WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Wimbledon remains the only Grand Slam tournament that pays the men’s champion more than the women’s winner.

The All England Club announced Tuesday that the men’s winner this year will receive $1.170 million and the women’s champion $1.117 million, a difference of $53,000. It’s a four percent increase in British currency.

The French Open announced earlier this month that it would pay the men’s and women’s champions the same amount for the first time, although the overall prize fund is bigger for the men. The two other Grand Slam tournaments — the Australian and U.S. Opens — have paid equal prize money for years.

Okay, so 96% is better than 70%, and it’s a bit hard to cry for millionaires whose shortfall for one tournament is way more than most people make in a year, but there’s still a disparity. Let’s see how the Wimbledon folks justify this.

”This issue is one of a judgment on fairness,” All England Club chairman Tim Phillips said. ”We believe that what we do at the moment is actually fair to the men as well as to the women.

”There is a lot of data around and in the end, you have to make a judgment and our judgment is made on the marketplace and it’s based on what we believe to be fair.”

How so, Tim?

Phillips said because top men rarely play in Grand Slam doubles events, they earn less overall than women. In addition, the men play best-of-five set matches, while the women play best-of-three.

”It just doesn’t seem right to us that the lady players could play in three events and could take away significantly more than the men’s champion who battles away through these best-of-five matches,” Phillips said. ”We don’t see it as an equal rights issue.”

Hm. Well, who sets the rules on how many sets in a match?

Oh. That would be you, Tim. So, Tim, why aren’t the “lady players” playing five sets, like the men?

Phillips said he didn’t think it would be beneficial for women to play best-of-five sets.

”Physically they could, yes,” he said. ”Our argument does go wider. One of the difficulties we have in defending our position is that we are talking effectively to the top women players.”

Well, Tim, if you’re having that much trouble defending your position, why continue to hold it? You’re not concerned that their lady parts might be affected by playing five sets, are you?

Phillips said the WTA Tour paid 63 percent less to players in an average week than the ATP Masters Series did.

”Whereas we’re 87 percent,” Phillips said. ”So it seems to me we are much closer to equal prize money than they are on the rest of the tour.”

You’ve lost me there, Tim. Unless you’re trying to say that overall, what with the extra money women make from playing in doubles matches, it works out in the end, even though the justification for paying the men more is that they play more sets.

You’re making my head hurt, Tim. I think I’m going to have to agree with the person who said this.

”In the 21st century, it is morally indefensible that women competitors in a Grand Slam tournament should be receiving considerably less prize money than their male counterparts,” WTA Tour chief executive Larry Scott said in a statement.

He accused Wimbledon of taking a ”Victorian-era view” on pay.

And let’s talk for a minute about stars, Tim. Tennis is one of those rare sports where the women are more widely known and widely watched than the men. Especially in the past several years, when the Williams sisters were on the rise and the biggest draw on the men’s side was Pete Sampras who, while a terrific player, was less than scintillating. Box-office draw is one of the reasons Hollywood always gives for paying women less than men, but it looks to me like you’ve got the opposite problem here. You’re trying to justify higher pay for men even though they aren’t as big a draw as the women by pointing at the number of sets they play in a match and refusing to acknowledge that you’re the one keeping it that way.

Don’t you think you’d increase drama and draw more TV revenue if you had the top women players playing five sets?

Oh, I see. You might have to pay them more than the men, then. And that just won’t do.

9 thoughts on Even Serena Williams

  1. I’m not sure that Tim, or any other specific person in the tennis world, has the power to change the rules of the game by that much. Speaking from my experience as a former high school varsity-level tennis player, changing the women’s tournaments from best of 3 sets to best of 5 sets would benefit some players and hurt other players. I think if that sort of change were to come about, it would have to be from the players themselves. It’s not fair to suddenly change the structure of the game and what type of strategy is best suited for it on people who have been training for years toward the old version.

    His half-assed argument that it all works out in the end because women play more doubles is crap, though.

  2. Don’t you think you’d increase drama and draw more TV revenue if you had the top women players playing five sets?

    I disagree with that… in my opinion, the women’s game is MUCH more exciting than the men’s game b/c it’s only 3 sets. You get more upsets and the sets are more meaningful.

    His argument is pretty terrible, though; in my opinion, I think that women should be paid equally or even more so; their game is much better than the men’s game and, as you said, there are more “stars” and intriguing characters in the women’s game.

  3. I am not sure that womens’ tennis is mored watched than mens’ tennis, at least not outside the US. However, I agree that women should be paid the same as the men.

  4. I have to disagree with JimL, since for years women’s tennis had vastly fewer upsets.

    Kristjan is right about the women not being more watched outside the US. Hell, even using Serena Williams as your dominant women’s star shows the US bias. Same with the Sampras thing. There are a ton of men’s stars again, they just aren’t american. (Neither are most of the women stars now.)

    As to the actual argument, it is crap. They should be paid the same. I remember years ago, when the women ended up with the #1 and #2 seeds playing each other every time, while any man in the top 10 could beat each other, that the fact “people came to watch the men” was used as the argument for pay disparity.

    As you mention, in the late 90s and early 00s, that changed, as the women became more interesting and competitive than the men. Nowadays both sides have strong depth and provide exciting, competitive play.

    As for doubles, top singles men used to play doubles as well, and were paid even more in proportion to the women, the argument is ridiculous.

    As for best of 5 for the women, I agree it needs to come with approval of the women themselves. But note that only grand slams are played with best of 5. Almost all other tournaments have both men and women competing in best of 3 set matches. (Sometimes the final is best of 5.) Since I rather suspect those have unbalanced payscales as well, Tim’s argument is even more crap.

  5. I have to disagree with JimL, since for years women’s tennis had vastly fewer upsets.

    My guess is that that women’s tennis has fewer upsets because of a lesser overall talent pool… meaning that the top-seeded women are just that much better than the lower-seeded women. Adding extra sets to a match would just increase the sample size and most likely exacerbate that trend for even fewer upsets. Stephen Jay Gould did some work on this with baseball and about how as the overall level of competition gets better, the likelihood for outstanding feats decreases (like hitting .400), but I might be misapplying his findings.

    I have no statistical backing for this, except some rudimentary principles like “regression to the mean” as a sample increases.

    You may be right, though; I’m certainly no tennis expert. And we agree on the essential point that the argument that they’re using is crap.

  6. Hell, even using Serena Williams as your dominant women’s star shows the US bias. Same with the Sampras thing. There are a ton of men’s stars again, they just aren’t american. (Neither are most of the women stars now.)

    Or it could just mean that these were the people who were at the top the last time I was hanging around with people who were obsessed with tennis. 😉

  8. Good luck getting the women to play 5 setters… The WTA (oh, sorry, Sony Ericson WTA tour) is so filled with injuries right now, it’s difficult to get them to play. Even when they have a completely blank week, like this week, Switzerland couldn’t get HIngis and Schnyder to play in the FedCup last week. Argh.
    Oh, but I agree that women and men should be payed the same amount (and I think Wimby is on the way… just need a bit of slapping around). Until the injury thing is resolved though, think we’ll be seeing less tennis instead of more.

  9. I disagree with that… in my opinion, the women’s game is MUCH more exciting than the men’s game b/c it’s only 3 sets. You get more upsets and the sets are more meaningful.

    IMO a five set game would be better. I was at the Oz open a few years ago and saw a women’s final that lasted less than half an hour. Very disappointing. Taking the game to five sets would change the dynamic and I think for the better.

    Also, I was under the impression that the argument against women playing five sets was scheduling. They just couldn’t fit it all in to two weeks. But I’m frequently wrong. It probably is because their female parts would fall out, or whatever.

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