When it comes to how much men’s and women’s tennis players should paid, relative to each other, no one can seem to decide what the correct measuring stick is. Should it be the amount of time they spend on court? How many tickets they sell? The TV ratings they generate? While I watched the first week of this year’s French Open, a new—and admittedly biased—category came to mind: How much entertainment value, as a whole, does each side bring to the enthusiastic, committed tennis fan?
By the end of this tournament, there’s a good chance it will be the men who command the lions’s share of attention. With all of the Big 4—plus Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gael Monfils—alive on the men’s side, and Serena Williams, Li Na, and Victoria Azarenka not alive on the women’s, it seems probable that the late-round ratings will be higher for the men. If Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Roger Federer reach the last weekend, the ATP will surely dominate in the media. You can almost read the the mainstream U.S. press articles now: “In the French Open final, it’s Sharapova vs. ... Who?”
By this measure, a tennis tournament can only succeed if it draws in millions of “casual fans.” And from a business perspective, it’s true, the more people who watch, and who see the various logos on display around the courts, the happier the sport’s sponsors will be. But as a non-casual fan, why should I have to worry about whether people who don’t normally care about the sport can be made to care about it for three hours a year?
Tennis, and especially the Grand Slams, will go on without them, and will continue to appeal to the passionate minority who are naturally inclined to like a one-on-one, non-contact, dual-gender, thoroughly international sport. Think of the women’s semifinals at Wimbledon last year: With all of the WTA’s stars gone, the press spent much of its time alarming us about the coming ratings debacle. Meanwhile, the tennis fans who did watch saw one of the best matches of the year, the semi between Sabine Lisicki and Agnieszka Radwanska.
Looking back over the last seven days, many of us enthusiastic, committed tennis fans would say that the women’s side was the place to be, and to watch. While the men’s draw has for the most part proceeded in an orderly, predictable fashion, the women’s has been a free-for-all. The top three seeds—Serena, Li Na, and Radwanska—were all gone by the fourth round, replaced for the moment by an exciting group of young players who have grabbed the spotlight in a variety of ways.