Is anyone really surprised that the WTA tour allowed the Dubai Tennis Championships to go ahead as scheduled this week despite the United Arab Emirates’ denying Israeli player Shahar Peer a visa to play the tournament?
For some time now, WTA CEO Larry Scott has been putting cash ahead of credibility. When events starting moving to the Middle East, Scott, and the tour’s players, didn’t seemed bothered by the fact that the WTA was putting down roots in a region that treats women as second-class citizens.
When the tour’s season-ending championships moved to Doha last year, Scott went so far as to say that the tour’s presence in the Middle East would serve to bring about social change. “I understand the reaction of some people [to the move], but we actually see it as the opposite,” Scott said. “We see women’s professional tennis as a catalyst in producing social change.”
Care to revise that statement, Mr. Scott? Apparently not. He was too busy reacting to the Peer incident with a carefully worded statement that didn’t say much at all. Well, unless you count that he was “deeply disappointed.” You don’t say.
But while I read Scott’s press release and laughed at its predictability, I was (to borrow Larry’s words) “deeply disappointed” in the players’ reaction. All the tour’s top stars are in Dubai, of course, to cash in. Peer wanted to be part of the money-making machine, and her absence has caused an outcry.
“It’s not acceptable,” Amelie Mauresmo said. “I think sport should be above issues like that to do with religion and wars and whatever. I’m surprised.”
Ana Ivanovic felt bad, because “Shahar is a friend of mine and I feel sorry she’s not here. It’s always a pity to mix politics and sport.”
And this from Venus Williams: “All the players support Shahar. We are all athletes and we stand for tennis. The players have to be unified."
I could go on, but it’s too much to take. While I expected Scott, the tour’s chief suit, to drop the ball on this issue, I had hoped to see the players take a stronger stance instead of just paying lip service to Peer. Maybe it’s naïve of me, but wouldn’t the players want to stand up for each other and go beyond meaningless statements? They are all bound together as part of a union called the WTA tour. If they really felt so strongly about one of their co-workers being mistreated, why not boycott the event?
It’s not as if Mauresmo, Venus, or Ivanovic, among all the others, are going to find themselves in line for government cheese if they skip this one tournament.
If the players can’t do the right thing, perhaps their agents should remind them that there are practical reasons to stand together. In this global sport, during a time of deep global recession and political unrest, what happens the next time a player is denied access to a country because of her nationality, or whatever other ridiculous reason? Or maybe it doesn’t matter unless that player’s name is Williams or Sharapova or Ivanovic.
But even if we ignore the precedent of exclusion that this unfortunate incident sets, the players’ inaction is disappointing. For this one tournament, in this particular week, they had a chance to put principles ahead of economics. It would have been the boldest and most effective statement of all.
James Martin is Editor in Chief of TENNIS.