Here’s an article from a few days ago on the topic. Included in the piece are some unflattering comments Joe Louis Tsonga made about women players. I can’t get over how quick the author doubled back to let us know Tsonga is alright, nevertheless. Hysterical stuff.
Equal pay divides elite tennis players
PUBLISHED: 25 Jan 2013 12:15:00 | Andrew Heathcote
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The Grand Slam prizemoney earned by elite women players such as Maria Sharapova has drawn criticism from some on the men’s tour.
Photo: Reuters
Over the next two days, men’s and women’s singles tennis champions will be crowned at the Australian Open. Both winners will receive cheques for $2.43 million. The total prize pool for the men is $22.01 million and women, despite strained protest from some, will get the same amount.
Women and men rarely compete alongside each other on the tennis circuit outside of the grand slam events. When they do, lingering tension about equal prize money is never far from the surface.
In recent days, top male player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga stoked the fire with some less than diplomatic comments about the ability of female players to play at a consistently high standard.
“You know, the girls, they are more unstable emotionally than us,†said the sensitive new age Frenchman. “I’m sure everybody will say its true, even the girls.â€
Earlier this year, another member of France’s Davis Cup team Gilles Simon made some equally provocative comments.
Simon, who sits on the (men’s) Association of Tennis Professionals players’ council, was unequivocal in suggesting that male tennis players should get paid more than their female compatriots.
“We often speak of equal money but I think it’s something that doesn’t work in sport,†Simon said.
“Tennis is the only sport today where we have parity even though men’s tennis remains more attractive than women’s at this time.â€
Men and women receive equal prize money at each of the four grand slam tournaments. Wimbledon become the last to offer women the prize money same as men in 2007.
The Australian Open, which is paying more to the players this year than it ever has before, has been writing matching cheques for more than a decade.
But to some minds, equal pay is anything but fair.
The most commonly used argument against equal pay in tennis is that men play longer matches. In grand slam events men play best of five set matches while women play best of three.
This doesn’t always ensure longer men’s matches but sometimes the disparity in length between men’s and women’s matches can be especially noticeable.
In the 2012 Australian Open, Victoria Azarenka, who has sparked a different controversy this year for her gamesmanship in her semi-final win, received $2.3 million for winning the women’s singles title. In doing so she played 15 games.
The men’s champion last year was Novak Djokovic. He also received $2.3 million but instead of 15 games he played 55, just five less than Azarenka played in her first four matches of the tournament. (Men and women both have to win seven straight matches to win a grand slam event.)
Maria Sharapova lost to Azarenka in last year’s final and Roger Federer lost the men’s event. Both got cheques for $1.15m despite Shaparova having only won three games in her last match of the tournament and Federer winning 25 in his.
Some (men) say such disparities are an outrage. They argue that male players are clearly working harder than the women and therefore deserve more money.
This argument is of course ridiculous – it’s not the fault of Sharapova and Azarenka that their opponents didn’t put up much of a fight. And besides, no one deserves more than $1 million for the effort that goes into playing in a two-week tennis tournament.
Tennis players make large amounts of money because they deliver large amounts of revenue for tournament organisers.
Huge crowds have attended this year tournament including a grand slam record of 80,649 on January 19. Women’s and men’s matches have both proven to be popular and while prime time night sessions on local broadcaster Channel Seven have tended to feature men’s matches more prominently than women’s matches, this might have been very different had Australia’s best player Samantha Stosur performed better.
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