Parity in tennis doesn’t just mean equal prize money for men and women players

David Long is a senior sports reporter at Stuff

OPINION: The 50th anniversary of men and women getting equal prize money at the US Open has been a big deal at this year’s grand slam.

Billie Jean King and Michelle Obama made speeches during the evening session on the first night to mark the occasion.

While it’s a good thing to celebrate, there’s still a vast gap between how men and women are regarded and paid in tennis.

First of all, it’s a bit rich of the US Tennis Association to be celebrating this milestone as this only came about thanks to King securing a sponsorship deal with Bristol Myers Squibb, who wanted to pay the entire prize money for women at the 1973 US Open.

“If I can bring in the money, then how are they going to say no?” King said years later.

Anyway, while men and women have received the same prize money at all four grand slams since 2007, with Wimbledon being the last to change, men still earn more money at tournaments over the rest of the year.

At this year’s Cincinnati Open, the men played for US$6.6 million (NZ$10.4 million) of prize money, while for the women it was US$2.8 million (NZ$3.4 million).

In June the WTA announced it had created a pathway towards equal prize money with the men’s ATP.

The plan is for WTA 1000 and 500 combined events attaining equal prize money by 2027 and single-week WTA 1000 and 500 events by 2033.

To help achieve this, the WTA is aiming to make its 1000 and 500 level events more attractive, by getting the top players to compete in more of them. As a result of this, 250 level tournaments, which the ASB Classic is one of, are having restrictions placed on them, reducing the number of top players that can participate in it.

But even though there’s the intention for male and female players to compete for equal prize money throughout the year, women’s matches still aren’t held in the same high regard as men’s ones at tournaments.

For the four grand slams, the women’s final is always on Saturday and the men’s final is on Sunday.

It’s as if women’s final is the curtain raiser and the men’s final has to be a climax to a tournament.

Men play best-of-five-set matches at grand slams, while it’s best-of-three for the women, so an argument why they have to play their final a day later is to give them more time to recover is a valid one. But that’s something we’ll get back to.

For combined WTA and ATP tournaments like Indian Wells, Miami, Rome and Madrid there’s no excuse for them to have the men’s final last. It’s just the perception from them that the men’s final is more important so it should be played last.

So let’s see a tournament make a real statement about equity and play the women’s final last.

With the grand slams, a more radical approach is needed. So cut down the size of the draws to 96 and allow women to play best-of-five-set matches.

It’s what a lot of women players want and it would help give their matches more of an epic feel, like we had for this year’s Wimbledon final between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic. Let’s give that same battle of stamina, mental strength and pressure to women’s tennis.

It would also give women’s matches the same amount of TV coverage too, as the matches should be of equal length.

The grand slams have argued that there wouldn’t be enough time over a fortnight to fit everything in if women also played best-of-five-set matches, which is why dropping draws to 96 and giving some players first round byes would free up that space. Even make the first round best-of-three-sets if need be.

It might be messing with the purity of the grand slams, but that started happening when tiebreaks came in.

So it was nice to hear the speeches from King and Obama, but what started 50 years ago, wasn’t the end of the story, it was just the beginning and sadly there’s still a way to go.