I brought up the question at our athletic club of “If Venus and Serena Williams were seeded among the men, where would they rank?”
I have had a range of answers from “In the top 25” to “They wouldn’t even be in the top 100”.
I’ve heard of the controversial match between Billie Jean King and some other guy back in the 70s and the the Williams sisters backing out of a match pitting them against John McEnroe and his brother.
So where might they fall???
On her best day, Serena Williams might rank around #500 among the men.
I have little doubt that the #200 male tennis pro (whoever that is) would take her in straight sets, easily.
Attached is a link that illustrates my point. Venus and Serena DID once play an exhibition match against an unheralded male pro, and he beat them both without working up a sweat.
http://xtramsn.co.nz/sport/0,,3934-2425220,00.html
When Chris Everett was the Number 1 woman in the world her husband, John Lloyd, was somewhere around the Number 120 man. He would mop the floor with her when they played.
The Billie Jean King vs Bobby Riggs match was hardly controversial. It was a publicity stunt. Billie Jean was in her prime and Riggs was in his 60’s.
They wouldn’t even crack the Top 200.
Haj
Another vote for outside the top 200. Their best chance of winning, say, even two games in a set against the men would probably be on a clay court. But still, that’s a long shot.
But here’s an interesting question: It’s obvious that both the women and the men have gotten better over the years. How far back in time would we have to go before Serena would be able to hold her own against the top man of the era? If it’s fairly recently, it should be able to be backed up with at least things like speed of serve and such.
Give Serena the handicap of the old-time player using older equipment.
Riggs-King was also using rules that, IIRC, strongly favored King.
I remember McEnroe talking about challenging the Williams sisters, according to him the sticking point was that he didn’t want an exhibition with everbody pocketing a hefty fee, he wanted a winner-take-all match.
-lv
I’m not sure the sisters backed out of that match- I don’t know that they were ever ‘in.’ Anyway: King-Riggs has been discussed; Martina Navratilova played Jimmy Connors in a similar format and got her butt whooped (and the age gap was a good deal smaller).
If you change the equipment, I think you eliminate any fairness from the comparison. It’s hard to compare athletes from different eras anyway. But I think an Borg or Edberg or Becker would have a shot, for example.
And to add to green_bladder’s post, neither of them even plays that well on clay. So who knows. 
Not very far, I’d reckon. I haven’t seen much of the McEnroe era, but maybe she could hold her own against some ATP players during and prior to that era. Then again, she’d have alot of adjusting to do, for example, the balls back then were much much lighter than they are today and she’d probably send balls sailing past the basline. And how would she counter the serve and volley game that was so dominant back then? There are hardly, if any S+V players in the WTA today.
Connors only got one serve and had to cover the doubles alleys also. And he won. Here is an interesting site covering a number of the match-ups mentioned already.
Y’know, I had a completely different notion of what the ‘seeding’ in the title referred to when I first saw this thread.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by LordVor *
How far back in time would we have to go before Serena would be able to hold her own against the top man of the era? /QUOTE]
Yeah, you’re right plonks like Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad, John Newcombe, Neil Fraser (just to mention a couple of the Aussies) couldn’t play tennis to save themselves. :rolleyes:
Any of the guys above on any surface but especially grass would simply keep the ball in play and by the 6th return Serena/Venus would drop it half court for an easy put-away or flog it 6 feet over the baseline. Navratilova, Seles, Graf, King or Margaret Court would make for a closer match than the Williams sisters.
Also remeber that part of the reason players have got better is that rackets have got better, I doubt any modern player would fare thta well with a wooden racket.
Where did I imply that, woolly? I said in my opinion it’s possible that she could’ve held her own against that era (using her current racket), but that there are lots of other factors to be considered. I also mentioned she’d have trouble defending the serve and volley game that was used so widely back then.
Often forgotten in the King-Riggs episode is that Riggs had already beaten the world’s #1 female at the time. (King was #2.)
I think it’s possible either Williams, in their prime, might crack the top 500, but that’s as far as I would go. And I wouldn’t bet on it.