Onstage at Lantern Theater Company November 7 through December 15, 2019, The Last Match by Anna Ziegler explores the careers of the superstar male players at the center of the tennis match, and the women they love. One of those women, Mallory Sinclair, is herself a former elite professional tennis player — and yet, despite advancing in the French Open and being ranked in the top 20, she was at one point known in the press as simply “Tim Porter’s sweaty new girlfriend.”
She rightfully bristles at the descriptor, and the disparity in respect between the men’s game and the women’s game has been a topic of discussion for decades. Those who argue that men’s tennis is more important than women’s point to things like workload. The men are required to play a few more tournaments than the women, and in Grand Slams they play to best-of-five sets to the women’s best-of-three. They also point to viewership; on average, men’s tennis draws more television viewers and ticket sales.
However, at all other tournaments outside of the four Grand Slams, men and women both play to best-of-three sets. And while the overall viewership favors the men (especially in the lower level, non-Grand-Slam tournaments), this is far from a universal trend. In 2013 and 2014, more people watched the women’s U.S. Open finals than the men’s, and in 2015 the women’s U.S. Open final sold out before the men’s.
But despite the discrepancy in viewership, tennis is by far the most egalitarian sport for female athletes in terms of pay. Since 1973, when twelve-time Grand Slam winner and “Battle of the Sexes” winner Billie Jean King threatened to boycott, the U.S. Open has paid male and female players the same amount. In 2007, Wimbledon joined the other three Grand Slams in offering equal pay, meaning that all four Grand Slams pay men and women the same. Eight of the ten highest paid female athletes are tennis players.
While the pay for non-Grand-Slam tournaments is far from equal between the genders, the pay gap in tennis is approximately 80 cents on the dollar for women. Compare that to basketball, where in 2019 members of the championship men’s team each earned $240,000 for winning the title, while members of the championship women’s team earned $11,000 each for the same feat. And the U.S. women’s national soccer team filed a wage discrimination lawsuit this year, as women have the potential to earn less than half what the men do, despite actually generating higher revenue than the men.
In American tennis, women have dominated in recent years. During the 2019 U.S. Open, four American women made it to the fourth round, including Serena Williams and rising star Madison Keys, while no American man made it past the third. During the U.S. Open, there were 13 American women in the top 100, including three in the top 10 and another in the top 20; there are just nine American men in the top 100, the highest-ranked being John Isner at #16.
These rankings are significantly more volatile on the women’s side than the men’s. While the men’s side has been dominated by Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer for nearly 20 years, the women’s rankings change much more frequently. Two of the three American women who were in the top 10 as of September 2019 have since dropped out of that category, while 2019 U.S. Open-winner Bianca Andreescu moved up nearly 200 spots in the rankings in the year before her victory. That’s because there’s greater parity on the women’s side — more players of relatively equal ability battling it out all year.
But of course, then there’s Serena Williams. It is a testament to the volatility of the women’s rankings and the depth of the talent pool that Williams is currently ranked #10, despite holding dozens of records and being what many consider the greatest tennis player of all time, male or female. Chief among them are her 23 Grand Slam titles, a record for the Open Era — three more than Roger Federer’s record on the men’s side, and one away from tying Margaret Court’s 24 Grand Slam titles, an all-time record across all players of both genders.
Some of those records involve her age — she holds several records for accomplishments achieved after the age of 30. Though she shows no signs of retirement, at 38 (the same age as Federer), Williams is significantly older than the average player. When she lost the 2018 U.S. Open to Naomi Osaka, she was playing someone who wrote a report on Williams in the third grade.
There is one physical characteristic that is unique to the women’s game: pregnancy. Female tennis players must make careful choices about when and if they will become pregnant, and what that means for their return to the sport. In 2017, Serena Williams won the Australian Open while eight weeks pregnant, defeating her sister Venus Williams, another all-time great player. It was an astonishing achievement — and her last Grand Slam victory to date. After returning from her 13-month maternity leave, Williams was unseeded in the 2018 French Open despite having won her last major tournament, prompting the Women’s Tennis Association to introduce policy changes to ensure that players are not penalized for maternity leaves or long-term injuries.
Returning to tennis after having a child is not a decision that male players must wrestle with, at least not on a physical level. But pregnancy has a massive effect on female players’ bodies, and only three women have won Grand Slam titles after having a 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚢. In 2018, there were four mothers in the top 100 (not including the then-unranked Serena Williams), compared to 20 fathers. And while the Grand Slam tournaments offer daycare for players’ children, other tournaments often provide no childcare at all.
While the game largely remains the same, and the psychological demands of becoming and remaining an elite player affect men and women alike, female tennis players contend with unique physical considerations and public perception. For champions like Williams, Andreescu, and Osaka, this does not inhibit their love of the game — or their drive to win.
