Not to give CEO Larry Scott a nudge while he’s going out the door, because in nearly 17 years covering the sport and more than a fair share of women’s tennis, he was by far the best leader the WTA had ever had. But the idea of combining the WTA and ATP would be totally insane for the women and I was a bit surprised to hear that Scott pushed the idea so hard last fall.
Exactly how would the women benefit from such a move, other than in combining administrations as a cost cutting measure? They are already plenty of combined events (the four Slams, Indian Wells, Miami and Beijing) as well as big back to back tournaments (Rome, Madrid, Cincinnati). But many times at those prestigious, the women get overlooked and are way under covered compared to the men. From my experience at the combined events, women’s matches are also less attended , as most fans are still men and many men prefer to watch men’s tennis (and many women shade toward watching the guys, too). There were two glaring instances of this at Indian Wells, when almost no one watched defending champ Ana Ivanovic battle Flavia Pennetta in a highly competitive match on the main stadium, while Stadium 2 was packed with folks watching Roger Federer play doubles. The same thing happened to top seed Dinara Safina one night when Rafa Nadal was playing doubles.
Sure, Nadal and Federer are the men’s most popular players, but the discrepancy shouldn’t be that large. But it is, perhaps because fans believe that men’s tennis is of much higher quality than the women’s, or because the WTA still has the unfair reputation of lacking depth.
Whatever the case, when the WTA’s three top draws of Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters aren’t around and the men are also in town, the women have trouble putting butts in the seats, even for such terrific personalities and players as Ivanovic, Safina, Jelena Jankovic and Elena Dementieva.
Moreover, much of press corp is (still) more focused on the men, too, and unless they are forced to do a women’s piece, the WTA is often dropped down to the bottom of an article, or not even mentioned. Just take a quick Internet surf and see who much more coverage Nadal received for beating Andy Murray in the IW final, versus the amount of coverage that Vera Zvonareva got for besting AI.
That’s why the women need to have their own decent-sized tournaments, so the fans who choose to buy tickets, watch them on TV or read about them can get a full taste of their games and personalities. If the tours were fully combined and the only women’s only tournaments that were left were B-level, $220,000 events, they would never have the full opportunity to fully market their up and comers, which would eventually cut their knees out from under them. The only place that fans would be ‘looking for a hero’ would be on Court 4s the world over.
Just think about how beneficial it was to so many women players to win Tier II tournaments and grab their piece of the world headlines? I’ve covered more than my fair share of WTA Tier II’s and can honestly say that players such as Kim Clijsters, Ana Ivanovic, Anna Chakvetadze, and even Alex Wozniak got huge Cue–quality bumps from raising trophies. If they were playing in the same locale as the guys, they might have had to be satisfied with a few lines in the agate. Elena Dementieva hit the nail on the head when asked what her thought was on some of the men saying the women should play the second night match at the Slams: ‘I’m glad they’re still notice us.’ The women don’t need that don’t kind of back-of the-bus- the attention.
Notes From All Over
Speaking of Dementieva, I ran into her on Sunday in between sets of the IW women’s final and asked what the heck she was still doing into the desert some nine days after her opening round loss. Beaming, she said she was enjoying a little desert R&R while practicing. She said she’d have to be dragged on to the plane to go to Miami…BTW, for those of you who were wondering, and there are always a lot of you out there digging up nuggets, the Family Circle Cup in Charleston did offer Maria Sharapova a wild card, but she declined. Rome remains her target date.
Quickly to the impressive winners in Miami: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Maria Kirilenko, Jelena Dokic, Nicole Vaidisova, Alexa Glatch, Li Na, Lleyton Hewitt, the Bag Man, Nicolas Massu, John Isner, Amer Delic, Sam Querrey and Bobby Reynolds. …Dick Enberg will receive the second Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting from WFUV Radio… Pete Sampras saved two set points and defeated Patrick Rafter 7-6(6), 6-4 Sunday to win the singles title at the $150,000 Del Mar Development Champions Cup… Tennis Channel will count down the top-five chokes in the sport’s history on “Best of 5: Chokes.” The show is scheduled to first air Sunday, March 29, at 7 p.m. EST. Brad Gilbert, Jim Courier, Tracy Austin, Justin Gimelstob, Rafael Nadal and yours truly will appear, but I think I choked speaking about my favorite choke. Stay tuned….John McEnroe has teamed up with GlaxoSmithKline to create a public-education initiative entitled the “50 Over 50 Prostate Health Challenge.”
From TennisReporters.net
