We demand equal prize money! (Tennis in General)

Member Name: gillyman

Product:	Tennis in General
Date:	10/07/02 (131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: After deuce

Disadvantages: This opinion may cause me grief!

The debate around equal pay for men and women in tennis is a long standing one and one which has the force of logic standing squarely behind it. Morally is there any way to justify paying a man more for doing the same job as a woman?

In recent years, the prize money at Wimbledon has come closer to being equal for men and women. In 2002, Leyton Hewitt walked away with a cheque for 525,000 pounds for winning the men's singles whilst Serena Williams pocketed 486,000 pounds for the equivalent women's title. Clearly however, a gap still exists and certain people are still not happy about this. Whilst I agree with them wholeheartedly that men and women doing the same job should be paid equally, I believe a reexamination of the statistics will show that far from being hard done by, women actually often earn more from tennis than the men.

In general, woman's tennis lacks in depth and is generally fairly predictable in terms of the result (Wimbledon has been won by the top seed 15 times in the last 25 years and the lowest ranked player to win in that period was Venus Williams ranked 5 in 2001). In that commercially it doesn't make sense for a sponsor to put too much money into someone outside the top two, I don't think women's tennis generates as much revenue. I don't have the exact statistics to back me up on that however so lets move onto my 2 main arguments which will be backed by empirical data from Wimbledon 2002.

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1) Time spent on court
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Serena, in winning last year's title, spent the grand total of 7 hours and 57 minutes on court. Venus got through her 7 singles matches in an astonishing 7 hours and 15 minutes. Of their 14 combined games, 6 were over in less than an hour, the shortest being just 42 minutes. Venus played in one match that went to 3 sets; Serena in none.

Hewitt, in winning the titl
e, played 15 hours and 45 minutes of tennis - more than the William's sisters combined! He only played in one 5 setter which totalled 3 hours and 51 minutes - more than 1/2 the time that Venus spent on the court in the entire tournament.

Unfortunately I can't find full stats on Nalbandian as the official website apparently did not consider him important enough to time his first two matches (3 and 4 sets respectively). The five matches that I do have times for clock in at 13 hours and 20 minutes so it is safe to assume that he played considerably more tennis than Hewitt.

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Conclusion 1 - graft = money
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This brings me to my first conclusion - the men work more than twice as hard and therefore deserve more money. And this is indeed the case - or is it?

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2) Free time
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In both the ladies and the gents, the aim is to play all 7 rounds and to win the trophy. In the case of the gents tournament where gruelling 5 set matches are par for the course this means that the players will plan on resting between the matches - any free time is a bonus. Of Hewitt's 7 matches for example, the shortest was 1 hour and 28 minutes. His average time on court was 2 hours and 15 minutes (and 6 of his matches were mere 3 setters). Serena on the other hand averaged a mere 1 hour and 8 minutes on court.

Knowing that they can be on and off, showered and interviewed in the time that it takes most men to play out a set with a tiebreaker, Serena and Venus made very good use of their spare time - by entering the doubles. In the time when most men were resting their aching muscles, the sisters managed to fit in another 6 matches of doubles. Of the top 16 women, 10 (including the top 3 seeds) played in the doubles this year and 2 even played in th
e mixed doubles too. Of the top 16 men, 4 played doubles.

Thus the total amount of time that the sisters spent on court was: Serena - 14 hours and 36 minutes, Venus - 13 hours and 54 minutes. It would have been less still but they somehow contrived to lose a whole set on their way to the doubles title. Still - Serena managed to win two titles and was still on the court for less time than Hewitt took to win the singles.

So - having played 14 hours and 36 minutes of tennis against opposition that managed to take 1 set off her in 13 games (probably Venus' fault!) Serena walked away with 583,125 pounds, a shade under 60 grand more than Hewitt.

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Conclusion 2 - greater opporunities for women!
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As a result of the fact that they spend far less time on the court in the singles - the ladies are able to cash in on the doubles and make more money than the men whilst playing less.

To conclude, I believe that the nature of the woman's game today allows the top players in particular to earn a hell of a lot of money and in certain cases, more than the men. if you think I'm wrong I'll be happy to hear from you.

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