Tennis: Let's hear it for best of 5 in majors for women

The Game Room
1

Okay, I didn’t want to hijack the Tennis 2013 thread, but now that the last major of the year is over, can we discuss why women don’t play best of five in the majors?

They went all out to get the same money, and they got it. But they really don’t have the same grind.

For most people most of the time, the rule is best of 3. This means that once you’ve won the first set, you’re halfway there.

But for male pros, in the majors, there is a complete change of strategy, and it matters. You win one set, you aren’t nearly halfway there. Conversely, you lose the first set, and you have plenty of time to recalculate your game and get on track. It’s rare but not that rare for someone to be down two sets to love and manage to win the match.

Argument against: longer games are not necessarily better games. True. But if it’s not a better game then it’s probably not gonna go five sets. And it can be a very good game even if it’s only four sets. And even if it’s only three hard-fought sets. Just because it’s best of 5 doesn’t mean there will be 5.

Argument against: women are not tough enough. Bullshit. I’m a woman, and while I’ve never played a five-set match, I have played back-to-back matches–and as a non-pro who can take the whole first set to get my shit together and figure out what I’m doing, I did pretty well in those matches. You can argue that a club player is not exerting at the level of a pro, which is true. You can also argue that a club player is not earning millions a year and has neither the time nor the incentive to get into that top physical condition.

Argument for: more court time for women and potentially better matches. More advertising revenue. A better chance to catch a really great match. The same rules as the men.

Hell, if you’re worried about delicate little flowers like Serena you could even say the 5-set matches don’t start until the quarter-finals. And give the men that same break.

2

I wonder about scheduling issues at the majors if the women were to play five sets, too. There are only so many courts, and you’re already running a huge number of matches. Extending a significant portion of those matches by possibly two more sets is going to make things pretty crowded.

Also wonder about Wimbledon specifically. Those grass courts really take a beating during a tournament. Can they take even more wear and tear?

But assuming those issues can be solved, sure. Let the ladies play five sets.

3

It’s not going to happen. The players don’t want it, the sponsors and organizers wouldn’t want it either. In fact my general impression is that most of the people who want it (and I’m not talking about the OP in particular) aren’t tennis fans. They’re bros who think they’re going to score a point against feminism.

4

What is it the format non Grand Slam women Tournaments? IIRC, 1 week, 32 players.

That means the finalists are playing FIVE best of three set matches in 7 days. Whereas in the Grand Slams, the women finalists are playing 7 matches, in 14 days. Much more time for recovery in the Grand Slams.

5

It varies, but I think most of the premier events (the next-biggest ones) are 48, with the top 16 players getting a bye into the second round. That’s two fewer matches for the top players.

6

I support it, am a huge tennis fan, and am not scoring a point against feminism.

I think there are women fit enough to want it, too. I heard Martina Navratilova years ago(over a decade ago, probably) saying that she would have won even more majors if they had best of 5 because she was so much fitter than many of her competitors.

I know it’d be a scheduling nightmare, but I think they should do it. Or at least do it for the final.

7

Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this up, but I’m not saying that if you support the idea you’re not a tennis fan. I’m saying that based on what I’ve read myself the idea seems to be more popular among male non-fans than among people who really like the WTA. Even then it’s more of an intellectual exercise. There’s just no demand. If it were up to advertisers and tournament organizers, there would be no best-of-five for anybody because they hate how hard it is to determine how long the matches will take. The men used to play best-of-five more often and it’s been scaled back over time. Now it’s just the Grand Slams and the gold medal match at the Olympics. I assure you that you’re more likely to see best-of-three for everybody, and I think that’d be a real shame.

By the way the finals of the WTA Championships were best-of-five from 1984 to 1998. I saw Graf beat Hingis in one of those matches. It went five but wasn’t exactly a classic: 6–3, 4–6, 6–0, 4–6, 6–0. Hingis was 16 at that point and she was dead tired at the end. Different time, but still.

Navratilova was a freak of nature, though. She was still winning doubles titles at 50 and could’ve kept going after that. I don’t think the top players would get on board with the idea, and I think it’s even less likely that the other players would. The tour isn’t made up of Serena and Azarenka and Sharapova alone.

8

A strong case can be made that prize money should be related to tournament income generated. It appears that the men are responsible for selling more seats at a higher rate, and generating more TV revenue (by attracting more fans for a longer time).

In the face of this, fairness dictates that the women should at the least be willing to play longer matches - or give some of their prize money to those who are doing the heavy lifting.

9

Yup, that’s another one of those arguments I mentioned earlier. :wink: That’s not how TV commercials or ticket sales work, and it’s not how the tours are organized. Commercial time isn’t sold for men’s and women’s tennis, it’s sold for tennis. Say six hours at a time. It’s mostly the same with tickets to the matches. You get a ticket to a stadium or the grounds, not to a particular match or player. The ATP gets a share of the money from the commercials and ticket sales and the WTA gets a share of the money. They’re drawing from the same pool and not taking money from each other. The players also don’t get paid more for playing a longer match, so that doesn’t fly either. Meanwhile the organizers of the major events have agreed that it’s worth their while to pay the men and women equally. Market forces!

10

You’re saying that, unlike for other sports, what advertisers pay isn’t based on the number of viewers watching? Or that the number of commercials aired in a short match is the same as in a long match?

11

The advertisers buy ad slots in tennis coverage, not in specific matches. For example in the early rounds ESPN broadcasts six hours of tennis at a time. ESPN decides which matches to air and the schedule isn’t announced until late the previous night, so there’s no way anyone is buying ads for particular matches. And they don’t always show a full match from start to finish. Even when that happens, they often cut away to show parts of other matches.

12

One of the reasons the women players want to stay with best of 3, is that it allows them to also play doubles. It’s a nice little bit of pocket change.

Plenty of the top women play it. The Williams sisters have won a dozen doubles slams or so. On the men’s side it’s just doubles specialists.

13

It’s true that not many of the top singles men play doubles at the Majors because they are best of five, but plenty of the lower tier men do. Here are some singles players who played doubles at the US Open this year: Feliciano Lopez, Dolgopolov, Dodig, Malisse, Tomic, Davydenko, Robredo, Youzhny, Blake, Stepanek, Tursunov, Harrison, Sock, Benneteau, Verdasco, F. Mayer, Granollers, Haase, Seppi, Mahut, Llodra…

Why? Certainly for the same reasons that you cited for the women, plus doubles is a great way to hone net skills and reaction time. And let’s be honest, there are 4 dominant men in tennis right now and a whole stable of wannabes. What would you do if you were Dolgopolov or Ryan Harrison? My ass would be signing up for doubles, because I’d know I was going to have a lot of free time of my hands.

To answer the OP, aside from scheduling, which would be a nightmare, women are not made like men. Serena Williams said recently that the two sexes are so different that it’s almost like women’s tennis is a different game than men’s tennis. I agree with her. They ARE different games, just like doubles tennis is a much different game than singles tennis. And ALL have merit. I don’t WANT to see women play best of 5 because that would mean that strategy and shot making would take a back seat to endurance. I don’t want that. I mean, why do you think so many people pine for the return of the wooden racquet? Because the modern racquets and strings have transformed the genteel game of strategy and shot making into a slugfest with a divider net.

No, keep the women’s game where it is.

First of all, that door has been closed and there’s no going back. Secondly, if you’re going to argue that men bring in more fans, then I’ll ask if you believe that more people streamed into Flushing Meadows to watch the T.Smyczek v. Duckworth match or the V. Williams v. Zheng match? Who do you think filled the stands more: Lacko v. Devarrman or S. Stosur v. Duval?

Me? I think that, like all sports, the vast majority of players are super talented, and that is enough to draws the “real” fans in. But it takes something else, an x-factor, to bring in record crowds. For every Rafa, there’s a Cilic or Gasquet, and for every Serena, there’s a *-kova.

Besides, if you’re going to argue that the men should be paid more because they bring in more fans, why not take that logic one step further and simply pay the individual players based on who packs the stands? From personal experience, Rafael Nadal is going to double his paycheck, because more people watched him practice in Cincinnati than watched the live Haase (?) match. Federer shouldn’t even consider retiring because he’s got a long and lucrative career ahead of him. Marcos Baghdatis, who hasn’t made it past the 4th round of a major in 7 years, will be making a ton more money than Tomas Berdych, who is much higher ranked, and talented enough to actually win a tournament one of these days.

14

Well, you have to finance a whole circuit of players otherwise you haven’t got a tournament.

Like, F1 or the Diamond League, it’s basically a travelling circus - you need to take the highly trained animals along.

15

That’s sort of what appearance fees are. I don’t know much about how they work, but if you’re a famous player, you can get extra money for playing lower-level events that way. It doesn’t apply to the majors or the other mandatory events because they’re mandatory, but it’s how the exhibitions and smaller tournaments get some bigger names to show up. You’re right that under this system a handful of well known players would benefit and other players would get less money.

That’s already true since I’m sure he will continue to bring in money from exhibition matches and things after he retires. But I doubt money is what motivates him at this point since he’s been making tens of millions a year for about a decade.

16

Wouldn’t that be one less match for the top players?

17

Either I did the math wrong or I looked at the wrong events. I’ll try this again later.

18

But isn’t it true that what advertisers end up paying is related to how many people were actually watching? IOW, that the cost of an ad is $X up front plus $Y based on the TV ratings?

19

I thought the cost of an ad was based on expected viewership, but I could be wrong. I don’t sell TV ads for a living. By the way, far more people watched the women’s U.S. Open final than the men’s this year. It was something like 19 million to 11 million. I’m sure the Sunday vs. Monday scheduling had a lot to do with that, which is also good because it’s one more nail in the coffin for the Monday final thing.