EQUAL PAY OR EQUAL EXPECTATIONS?

Have you ever argued with someone so vociferously, for so long, that you forget what you were originally were arguing about in the first place?

Felled by his own sword, Ray Moore appeared to have cost himself a dream job as CEO of the joint event at Indian Wells, after being forced to resign for his comments concerning the debt of contribution the WTA owe to the biggest names in men's tennis.  In fact, the debt of contribution extends to everywhere else the two competing tours engorge themselves at the same troth.  Now, Ion Tiriac appears to be headed, once more, into the breach, with his recent statement concerning his brainchild, the joint event in Madrid, saying essentially the same thing.

Along the way, Novak Djokovic indelicately chimed in, followed by an effort to raise and carry the flag by Serena Williams, and a twitter spat initiated by Andy Murray, and inconsiderately drawing in Sergiy Stakhovsky, who responded clumsily, in his own defense. 

But for me, the question remains:  what exactly are we talking about anyway?  Did Ray Moore, or Ion Tiriac dispute either the ideal or the desire for equal pay at joint events?  Not by the hairs on their (double)chinny-chin-chins.  In fact both went out of their way to insist that they are in favor of equal pay, which would render the interceding arguments from players on both sides of the aisle, entirely moot.  But somehow the point they're making keeps getting twisted into a debate about equal pay.

The question is not whether men and women should be paid the same:  legally and morally, very few would argue that they shouldn't.  The real question is whether the women are doing their part to draw fans to joint events.  If the television revenues are any indication, the women figure to be less than half the draw of men in general - this includes events that don't overlap like Monte Carlo, Canada and Bercy.  So riddle me this:  if women's tennis is indeed the equal of men's tennis, why does the WTA (or anyone desperately seeking a male chauvinist villain in this debate) accept this disparity?

Because of the soft sexism of low expectations.  

The truth is that nobody - not even the WTA - actually expects women to draw equally to the men.  If they did, and there was room in the blogosphere and elsewhere to discuss this salient point, they'd all be asking the same question as Ray Moore and Ion Tiriac.  So why don't they?  I'm certainly more interested in men's tennis than women's tennis, but that's not because I'm gay (a fact) or sexist (a matter of opinion).  I prefer men's tennis because, for me, the draw to professional tennis has always been the game they play.  There was a time when women played the game in an equally aesthetically appealing way as the men.  I based my serve on Hana Mandlikova, and my volleys on Martina Navratilova.  For a time, I modeled my forehand on Steffi Graf's and to this day, I still emulate Justine Henin's footwork.  

Nothing and nobody since.

One of the problems I have with women's tennis is the paucity of variety - they don't only play they same, they look and sound the same too.  If you close your eyes, can you distinguish between the plaintive wail of Victoria Azarenka or the yawning moan of Maria Sharapova?  If you open your eyes quickly, observe two strokes, and close them again, could you tell which blonde Eastern European was which?  I couldn't.  And this absurd experiment with on court coaching, which is merely an even more absurd extension of the paucity of good coaching in women's tennis, makes the game look worse than the men's.  One baseball capped man after another entreating a pony-tailed malcontent to "play your game", which clearly isn't good enough, only to watch the calumny continue through to its logical conclusion.

This and many more eyesores on the women's game is one of many that I presume contributes to its lagging popularity.  Their year-end championships is a traveling circus with no character and almost no appeal outside of the wonkiest of wonks in the game.  As I write this, I have no idea where it will be held this year, where it was held the year before, or where it's been held since it left Madison Square Garden 20 years ago.  The men's version, on the other hand, has gotten its head out of its ass and planted the event at a venue that lends its gravitas and appeal to the event...and vice versa.  The women have continued to make their event just another date on the calendar, this one without the dead weight of all the players ranked #9 or worse.

And let's not forget the debacle that was the exclusion of Shahar Peer from the women's event in Dubai.  Rather than banding together in their own interest, the women essentially abandoned their colleague, abandoned their cause, ceded the power of what masquerades as a union and hid behind the sponsors.  Only Venus Williams even bothered to mention her name; this after she graciously accepted a 6-figure check that Peer was excluded from pursuing.

Now, lest you think my derision is reserved for the WTA, there may very well be plenty to criticize the ATP tour for...none of the cited issues above...but their own band of bad ideas nonetheless.  Only they have the luxury of hiding behind the enormous popularity, outstanding performances, and generally good marketing and public relations of the 4 horsemen of their (impending) apocalypse.  We won't really know how well the ATP is doing until these guys start losing more often than they don't.  They experimented with round-robins, but quickly realized they didn't need it.  This because if there's a tournament, and anyone of them are in it, it is very likely that one of them will be there at the business end of the event, along with all the kings' men.  Absent this convenient condition (which ironically applies as much to the ATP tour as it does to the joint events), as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on the ATP.

But I think when someone like Ray Moore or Ion Tiriac calls out the WTA for failing to do their job in making women's tennis the equal of men's, we should stop looking for the sexism in what their saying, but rather look out for the sexism in our reaction to it.  Because if you follow and believe in women's tennis the same as men's, there's absolutely no reason why the women's television revenue should be lower, and their stadiums empty at the joint events unless the player happens to be 6'1 or named Serena.

We can bury our heads in the sand, looking for the chauvinist pig hiding in plain sight.  But one of these days, the men are going to follow the logical extension of their argument that they deserve a bigger cut:  which is in fact, to cut out the middle (wo)man and abandon joint events altogether.  I suspect that if they did so, it wouldn't take long for the women and the tournaments to figure out that they weren't just blowing smoke up their own shorts, but actually making a salient economic point.  But by then, they'll be in the catbird seat, graciously offering (in their view, of course) a more economically equitable split of the revenue and the prize money.

And singing cock-a-doodle-do.

INDIAN WELLS: "ISMS" AND "SCHISMS"

What exactly is sexism?  Is it like art, where you know it when you see it, or does it require a fixed definition?  I'm a firm believer in the idea that words matter and definitions matter; the one without the other creates a murky waterway of innuendo and obligations, driving people to their battle stations, without any sense at all of what it is they're fighting for.  Political polarization has never been greater in this country:  whether your red, blue, purple or green, the telltale sign of your political orientation is the camp to which you report any time an issue comes up that brings it into relief.  The same could be said of the blogosphere when it comes to tennis.  The minute somebody says the word, "women", one is required to declare their position on their place in the game, as if that is something to be determined thereby.

But what happens when definitions are ill-defined?

Indian Wells CEO Ray Moore made the following comments, universally derided as sexist, prior to the final between Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka:

"I think the WTA - you know, in my next life when I come back I want to be someone in the WTA, because they ride on the coattails of the men.  "They don't make any decisions and they are lucky.  They are very, very lucky.  If I was a lady player, I'd go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they have carried this sport.  They really have."

Cue dramatic gasp, and clutching of the chest.  The words themselves could be interpreted offensively on a number of fronts:  from the reference to women getting down on their knees, to thanking God that two men were born that have been carrying the sport, to the very idea that the sport suffers from a disproportionate emphasis on the men even at joint events.  Of course, Serena was asked about his remarks and had this to say, right on cue:

"I don't think any woman should be down on their knees thanking anybody like that...I think Venus, myself, a number of players - if I could tell you every day how many people say they don't watch tennis unless they're watching myself or my sister - I couldn't even bring up that number...So I don't think that is a very accurate statement.  I think there are a lot of women out there who are very exciting to watch.  I think there are a lot of men out there who are exciting to watch.  I think it definitely goes both ways."

Curiously absent from this response, given almost entirely by rote, is the central complaint of Ray Moore:  it's not the women he's complaining about, it's the WTA, which at the moment is run by a man.  And the question of whether they are doing everything they can to add to the interest in the women's game, is an entirely separate question of whether the women are playing the wretched supplicants to the men.  That's because it is only viewed through the prism of an ill-defined notion of sexism, and incredibly gives a pass to an organization which must continually evaluate itself and the role it plays in promoting the game.  

Let us suppose for a minute that, in fact, the women's game were not entirely healthy, and the men's game did in fact bear some responsibility to uphold their sisters on the other side of the schedule?  What then would you make of Moore's comments?  Would he still simply be a sexist trying to denigrate the women's game, or someone concerned with the health of the WTA, because of the important role they play at the tournament of which he is CEO, and the paucity of promotion and proper management under which their great athletes toil?  You see, if your first and only reaction is to go to your battle stations and decry the messenger as a sexist, you won't even get to the more salient question of which you should truly be concerned if your concern is for the health of women's tennis.

When people decry the lack of racial diversity in tennis, does anyone interpret that as, in and of itself, the ravings of an out of touch racist, or someone who wants to deepen the pool of athletes and fans of the game?  When one decries the paucity of American stars in the game, the current crop of young yankees notwithstanding, is this seen as an anti-American bigot, looking to dismiss Americans from the game, or the very real concern that the traditionally most lucrative market for sports in general, and tennis in particular, may be lost to an entire generation?

Why then do we fall to our knees and pray to the Gods of political correctness that we might be delivered from the sexism of the grey old men of tennis, looking down on the world's center courts like the faces of the Kryptonian judges in "Superman"?  Is there an expectation that the WTA can and must raise the profile of the game with equal effectiveness as the ATP, or isn't there?  And if not, why not?  

That's the real sexism:  the assumption that by merely criticizing women, or more accurately those charged with the stewardship of their game, they are being denigrated as a whole.  In fact the opposite is true, the low expectations of sexism compels us to attack any genuine commentary on the direction of the game, with the WTA at the helm, rather than hold their feet to the fire and demand that they produce a product that is the equal of the men.  There are cases where the women's game outshines the men's, and to her credit Serena did point out the fact that the women's final of the US Open in 2015 was sold out before she lost her semi-final to Roberta Vinci, and more significantly, before the men's.  That's saying a lot given that the two finalists are two of the greatest players ever to whack fuzz off the ball in the history of fuzz whacking.  

But it was so obviously an anomaly that it has to be pointed out as a point of refutation.  How many times has that happened in the history of the US Open, or any of the majors, or any of the joint WTA/ATP events?  Serena has played her part, and for this she is duly compensated:  aside from her PR challenged blonde nemesis from Siberia, she is the highest paid female athlete in the world.  Most of the credit for this belongs to the two headed beast that forms her imaginary rivalry with Yuri Sharapov's daughter, and more importantly, not the WTA.

If you can find your way out of the camp, and if you care about women's tennis, there are a lot of questions about the decision making of the WTA over the last few years that can and should be asked.  Good questions that would inform the ill-formed, but no less pertinent comments of Mr. Moore, for which there are as yet few good answers:

• Why does the WTA continue to treat their Year End Championships (whatever the hell it's called these days) like a traveling circus?
• Where the hell was the WTA when Shahar Peer was being treated like a political tennis ball and denied entry to one of their premiere tournaments?
• Why do they distribute ranking points in a convoluted and irrational system, leading to majorless #1's that aren't worth the paper they're written on?
• Why do they persist with this obscene experiment with on-court coaching, when the coaching is clearly doing more damage than good?
• Why does the WTA continue to sell sex and get away with it, then decry sexism when they're called on it?
• Why is the blogosphere obsessed with men's tennis, if measured by its collective commentary, by comparison to the women's game?

You see, I care about women's tennis.  I grew up wanting to play like Martina Navratilova, I modeled my serve after Hana Mandlikova, and I still watch youtube clips of Justine Henin's matches where ever I can find them.  I'm not a sexist, and because I'm not a sexist, I don't falsely praise the quality of women's tennis out of a tacit and imminently sexist presumption that this is as good as it gets.  My expectation of women playing tennis is that they will be as athletic and skilled as the men, because that's what I grew up with, and that's what I've always enjoyed, and I know that's what they're capable of.

So please spare me the self-serving righteous indignation over sexist comments - the sexist comment that was implied, but unjustly ignored, is the assumption that the WTA has less of a responsibility to women's tennis, and by association tennis in general, than the ATP.  Nobody says boo when the same question is asked of the men, and the reason is more telling than the fact:  because everyone expects the men to carry their own weight.  When they don't, they get called out on it, and nobody runs to their battle stations to decry the sexism of criticizing men's tennis.  No, the only way to hold the WTA to the same standards as the ATP is to...well, hold them to the same standards.  

That isn't accomplished by hiding from an intellectual discourse on the state of women's tennis, and the role of the WTA, behind "isms" and "schisms" that are as facile as as they are useless.