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      U.S. Open Draws Pave the Way for a Rematch of Djokovic vs. Alcaraz in Final

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      Novak Djokovic, the No. 2 seed, does not have an easy path to a 24th Grand Slam title, and neither does Iga Swiatek, the defending women’s champion.After a marathon match between Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz on Sunday in the final of the Western & Southern Open in Ohio, Djokovic said he hoped to play Alcaraz again at the U.S. Open “for the crowd.”The crowd may get to see that rematch.The men’s and women’s singles draws for the U.S. Open, which begins on Monday in New York, revealed the path for Djokovic and Alcaraz to meet again in the final, which would also be a rematch of last month’s Wimbledon final, a thrilling five-setter that Alcaraz won after nearly five hours on the court.“Every match we play against each other goes the distance,” Djokovic said after the final on Sunday, adding that the match felt like a Grand Slam.Djokovic returns to New York after missing the U.S. Open last year because he was unvaccinated against the coronavirus and travel restrictions would not allow him to enter the United States. Now, with an injured Rafael Nadal and a retired Roger Federer not in his way, Djokovic will seek his 24th Grand Slam title and his third of the season after winning in Australia and France earlier this year.Djokovic, who will play Alexandre Muller of France in the first round of the tournament, will not have an easy path to the final. He could potentially face the No. 7 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece in the quarterfinals, and in the semifinals, Djokovic could play Holger Rune of Denmark or Casper Ruud, the Norwegian who reached last year’s U.S. Open final.Alcaraz, who will face Dominik Koepfer of Germany in the first round, could also see some formidable opposition as he looks to defend his U.S. Open title. Alcaraz could play against Jannik Sinner of Italy in the quarterfinals, followed by one of two Russians, either Andrey Rublev or Daniil Medvedev, the 2021 U.S. Open champion.The women’s draw could also lead to several rivalries and rematches. Iga Swiatek, the No. 1 women’s player in the world, could end up in the final against Aryna Sabalenka, this year’s Australian Open champion.In defending her U.S. Open title, Swiatek could face Coco Gauff in the quarterfinals. Before this month, Swiatek had won seven matches against Gauff, but the 19-year-old American finally found a way to defeat Swiatek this month in the semifinals of the Western & Southern Open. Gauff went on to win the tournament for her first WTA 1000 title.On the other side of the draw, Sabalenka could play a quarterfinal match against Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian No. 5 seed who reached the U.S. Open final last year and lost in the Wimbledon final in July. In the semis, Sabalenka could meet either Caroline Garcia of France or Jessica Pegula, the American No. 3 seed.While both draws offer promising matchups, this year’s tournament will miss some big names: An injury has kept Nadal sidelined since the Australian Open, with hopes to return next year. Naomi Osaka, a two-time U.S. Open champion, will miss the tournament after giving birth to her daughter this summer, and Emma Raducanu, the 2021 U.S. Open champion, is out as she recovers from three minor procedures.Simona Halep, a two-time Grand Slam singles champion, was withdrawn from the tournament because of a provisional suspension she received last year after she tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug during the 2022 U.S. Open.This year’s U.S. Open will also miss trick shots from Nick Kyrgios, who withdrew from the tournament because of a wrist injury.But despite the notable absences, the tournament will open with some strong first-round matches: Tsitsipas, who lost to Djokovic in this year’s Australian Open final, will start off against Milos Raonic, a Wimbledon finalist in 2016. Venus Williams, the 43-year-old seven-time Grand Slam champion, will play Paula Badosa, who won at Indian Wells in 2021. And Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open champion, will play in the first round against Beatriz Haddad Maia, a Brazilian player who has had a decent season, reaching the French Open semifinals this year and the round of 16 at Wimbledon. More

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      Billie Jean King on Victories Past, and the Battles to Come

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      The tennis champion’s activism won equal pay for women at the 1973 U.S. Open. Now 79, she is still leading the fight for equity — in sports and beyond.The more Billie Jean King talked about the past, the more animated she became about the future.King, the 79-year-old grand champion of tennis and gender equity, said she wanted to see more investment in women’s sports. More teams. More leagues. More women owners. More racial diversity, more data, more access and more opportunities.She charged crosscourt from one topic to the next, not content to celebrate the history she had made; she was too busy creating the template for tomorrow.“Equal investment is the most important thing,” she said during a telephone interview from London, while attending this year’s Wimbledon. “If I talk to a C.E.O., I ask him, or her, or whoever, ‘Do you spend as much on women’s sports as men’s sports?’ That’s the magic question.”It always has been.This summer marks 50 years since the United States Open awarded equal prize money for men and women, becoming the first of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments to offer it. King, who won 39 major titles, made that milestone possible with her relentless activism and by securing corporate sponsors behind the scenes.King celebrates after defeating Margaret Court in their women’s singles second-round match at Wimbledon in 1962. King went on to capture 20 Wimbledon titles.Central Press/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesOn the eve of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup — set to showcase the rise of women’s soccer and the movement for equal pay, led by the U.S. Women’s National Team — King’s influence still ripples through the sports ecosystem.“She is working as hard today as she was 50 years ago,” said Stacey Allaster, the United States Tennis Association’s chief executive of professional tennis, and the first female director of the U.S. Open, said. “And she’s so focused, I would say possessed. She’s continuing to live by what she believes: that sport is for social change, and it’s not what you get, but what you give.”King and her wife, Ilana Kloss, who is also her longtime business partner, have invested in six sports. In June, it was announced that Billie Jean King Enterprises would help run a new six-team women’s ice hockey league starting in January along with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ majority owner, Mark Walter, and his wife, Kimbra Walter.“We believe this is transformational, and it’s a sport that hasn’t had the platform that we believe it needs,” said Kloss, 67, a former doubles champion from South Africa and the chief executive of BJK Enterprises.Although she admitted that the path to establishing a successful women’s hockey league has been a “long road” (one that’s littered with past failures), she applauded the Walters’ commitment to women’s sports. “That belief sends an incredible message to the rest of the investment community,” Kloss said.Flashback to 1970 when King and eight other players, outraged the men were earning more than eight times the prize money that the women were at one tournament, signed $1 contracts to form a offshoot professional women’s tennis tour. The women, known as the “original nine,” risked being banned by tennis officials, but the gambit worked. In 1973 at Wimbledon, King led players in a vote that created what is now called the Women’s Tennis Association.King speaking before the Senate education subcommittee in Washington in 1973. After Title IX was passed, King started the Women’s Sports Foundation to develop more sports opportunities for girls and women.Associated PressIt was a heady time for women’s sports. In 1972, Congress enacted Title IX, which prohibited sex discrimination in schools and thus led to the creation of sports programs that spawned a generation of female athletes. Against that backdrop, King, No. 1 in the world, won the 1972 singles titles at the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.In New York, she was incensed to earn $10,000 — $15,000 less than the U.S. Open men’s champion, Ilie Nastase, did. King recalled how she met then with the tournament director Bill Talbert in a referees hut.Turning her chair to face him in the tiny space, she argued that a fan poll showed massive interest in women’s tennis. Then she revealed her ace: She had secured a sponsor — Bristol Myers’s “Ban” deodorant — to make up the difference in total prize money. Equal prize money became official in 1973.A few weeks after the 1973 U.S. Open, King crushed former No. 1 Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes spectacle that catapulted gender equality onto a world stage.“It’s hard to believe that 50 years have gone by — boink!” King said.This year’s U.S. Open, starting Aug. 28, will mark the equal prize money anniversary in multiple ways, including posters of King, an opening night tribute and an “equity lounge” on the site of the United States Open in Flushing, which in 2006 was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.When she’s on the way to her office there, Allaster touches a sign bearing King’s motto: “Pressure is a Privilege.”Allaster, the previous chief of the WTA, said King was an “accessible leader,” not just for her, but for rookies and superstars alike. Allaster called Venus Williams a “modern-day Billie Jean King” for how, during her prime, Williams lobbied Wimbledon officials — and by extension the French Open — to award equal prize money to women.King’s advocacy has always transcended tennis. She started the Women’s Sports Foundation in 1974 to develop sports opportunities for girls and women post-Title IX. After she was publicly outed for being gay in 1981 and lost many of her endorsements, she later became an activist for gay rights.King standing with her wife, Ilana Kloss, also her business partner of more than 40 years. The pair have invested in six sports, including women’s hockey.Chris Tanouye/Freestyle Photography, via Getty ImagesPhaidra Knight, a World Rugby Hall of Fame player and past president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, said King created an inclusive culture at the group. “Through that LGBTQ+ lens and her courage, she has inspired courage in many other lanes, for people to work together,” Knight said in an interview.Beyond King’s encouragement of her as a Black and gay woman, Knight said she valued how King taught her to approach rugby officials to improve business opportunities for the women’s game.Angela Ruggiero, another past president and a former women’s ice hockey Olympian, has also followed King’s lessons. She co-founded the Sports Innovation Lab, a market research company that uses analytics to understand digitally savvy sports fans. Her research shows that fans of every gender are responding to women’s sports. She has frequent brainstorming sessions with King, who never stops asking questions.“We’re going back and forth on how do we bring more capital into women’s sports,” Ruggiero said. “She’ll be at the edge of her seat, fired up. It’s just her nature to be an agent of change.”King said she secretly advised the soccer player Julie Foudy and eight of her teammates in 1995 to hold out for fair contracts and get the younger players behind them. The team won the 1996 Olympics and ignited the frenzy for women’s soccer by winning the 1999 Women’s World Cup before 90,185 fans in the Rose Bowl.Twenty years later, Megan Rapinoe led the U.S. women to another World Cup victory, this time with the fans chanting “Equal Pay.” In 2022, the women’s national team settled its gender discrimination lawsuit against the national federation for $24 million, and a pledge to equalize salaries and prize money.Megan Rapinoe led Team USA to victory at the 2019 World Cup, as fans in the stands shouted “Equal Pay.” Rapinoe recently said that the 2023 World Cup will show that “equality is good for business.”Alex Grimm/Getty ImagesLast month, Rapinoe talked at a news conference about how the 2023 World Cup would be a game-changer for women’s sports, showing that “equality is actually good for business.”King chuckled.“Every generation thinks they are the first to say this — it’s fun to listen to them,” she said. “I’m glad we’re on the same page trying to get things done.”As always, capital is key. She and Kloss — who joined the celebrity ownership group of Angel City Football Club of the National Women’s Soccer League in 2020 — were encouraged by Y. Michele Kang’s recent $35 million purchase of the league’s Washington Spirit.“We need more people to continue to step up,” King said. “If you look at everything now, it’s the billionaires. And then you look at the Middle East, that’s going to be another thing.”In a news conference, King supported the WTA’s exploration of funding from Saudi Arabia, which has already bought in to professional golf with its LIV Golf merger with the PGA Tour. Although she acknowledged the country’s discriminatory policies around women and homosexuality, she told reporters, “I don’t think you really change unless you engage.” She added that this was her opinion. “I’d still probably go and try to talk with them,” she said.Engagement has always been King’s life philosophy, along with knowing your history. She’s not ready to finish writing hers.In November, King will turn 80.“She really has a sense of running out of time,” Kloss said, “and she can’t get enough.” More

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      At Wimbledon, Is It Time for Hawk-Eye Live to Replace the Line Judges?

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      Line judges made incorrect calls in the first week that changed the trajectory of matches for Andy Murray, Bianca Andreescu and Venus Williams, among others. Is it time to give computers the job?Andy Murray was a victim.Bianca Andreescu was too.Jiri Lehecka had to play a fifth set and essentially win his third-round match twice.Hawk-Eye Live, an electronic line calling system, could have saved the players their set, even their match, but Wimbledon doesn’t use it to its full extent, preferring a more traditional approach. The rest of the year on the professional tours, many tournaments rely exclusively on the technology, allowing players to know with near certainty whether their ball lands in or out because the computer always makes the call.But when players come to the All England Club for what is widely regarded as the most important tournament of the year, their fates are largely determined by line judges relying on their eyesight. Even more frustrating, because Wimbledon and its television partners have access to the technology, which players can use to challenge a limited number of calls each match, everyone watching the broadcast sees in real time if a ball is in or out. The people for whom the information is most important — the players and the chair umpire, who oversees the match — must rely on the line judge.When the human eye is judging serves traveling around 120 m.p.h. and forehand rallies faster than 80 m.p.h., errors are bound to happen.“When mistakes are getting made in important moments, then obviously as a player you don’t want that,” said Murray, who could have won his second-round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth set, if computers had been making the line calls. Murray’s backhand return was called out, even though replays showed the ball was in. He ended up losing in five sets.No tennis tournament clings to its traditions the way Wimbledon does. Grass court tennis. Matches on Centre Court beginning later than everywhere else, and after those in the Royal Box have had their lunch. No lights for outdoor tennis. A queue with an hourslong wait for last-minute tickets.Those traditions do not have an effect on the outcome of matches from one point to the next. But keeping line judges on the court, after technology has proved to be more reliable, has been affecting — perhaps even turning — key matches seemingly every other day.To understand why that is happening, it’s important to understand how tennis has ended up with different rules for judging across its tournaments.Before the early 2000s, tennis — like baseball, basketball, hockey and other sports — relied on human officials to make calls, many of which were wrong, according to John McEnroe (and pretty much every other tennis player). McEnroe’s most infamous meltdown happened at Wimbledon in 1981, prompted by an incorrect line call.“I would have loved to have had Hawk-Eye,” said Mats Wilander, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and a star in the 1980s.But then tennis began experimenting with the Hawk-Eye Live judging system. Cameras capture the bounce of every ball from multiple angles and computers analyze the images to depict the ball’s trajectory and impact points with only a microscopic margin for error. Line judges remained as a backup, but players received three opportunities each set to challenge a line call, and an extra challenge when a set went to a tiebreaker.That forced players to try to figure out when to risk using a challenge they might need on a more crucial point later in the set.“It’s too much,” Wilander said. “I can’t imagine making that calculation, standing there, thinking about whether a shot felt good, how many challenges I have left, how late is it in the set.”Even Roger Federer, who was good at nearly every aspect of tennis, was famously terrible at making successful challenges.Hawk-Eye Live cameras along the outer courts at the U.S. Open in 2020.Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore long, tennis officials began considering a fully electronic line calling system. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, tournaments were looking for ways to limit the number of people on the tennis court.Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, said adopting electronic calling in 2021 was also a part of the Australian Open’s “culture of innovation.” Players liked it. So did fans, Tiley said, because matches moved more quickly.Last year, the U.S. Open switched to fully electronic line calling. There is an ongoing debate about whether the raised lines on clay courts would prevent the technology from providing the same precision as on grass and hardcourts. At the French Open and other clay court tournaments, the ball leaves a mark that umpires often inspect.In 2022, the men’s ATP Tour featured 21 tournaments with fully electronic line calling, including stops in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Canada; and Washington, D.C. All of those sites have women’s WTA tournaments as well. Every ATP tournament will use it beginning in 2025.“The question is not whether it’s 100 percent right but whether it is better than a human, and it is definitely better than a human,” said Mark Ein, who owns the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.A spokesman for the All England Club said Sunday that Wimbledon has no plans to remove its line judges.“After the tournament we look at everything we do, but at this moment, we have no plans to change the system,” Dominic Foster said.Line judges at Wimbledon are responsible for ruling the ball in or out.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesOn Saturday, Andreescu became a casualty of human error. The 2019 U.S. Open champion from Canada, Andreescu has been going deeper into Grand Slam tournaments after years of injuries.With the finish of her match against Ons Jabeur of Tunisia in sight, Andreescu resisted asking for electronic intervention on a crucial shot the line judge had called out. From across the net Jabeur, who had been close to the ball as it landed, advised Andreescu not to waste one of her three challenges for the set, saying the ball was indeed out. The match continued, though not before television viewers saw the computerized replay that showed the ball landing on the line.“I trust Ons,” Andreescu said after Jabeur came back to beat her in three sets, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.Andreescu explained that she was thinking of her previous match, a three-set marathon decided by a final-set tiebreaker, during which she said she “wasted” several challenges.Against Jabeur, she thought, “I’m going to save it, just in case.”Bad idea. Jabeur won that game, and the set, and then the match.Over on Court No. 12, the challenge system was causing another kind of confusion. Lehecka had match point against Tommy Paul when he raised his hand to challenge a call after returning a shot from Paul that had landed on the line. His request for a challenge came just as Paul hit the next shot into the net.The point was replayed. Paul won it, and then the set moments later, forcing a deciding set. Lehecka won, but had to run around for another half-hour. Venus Williams lost match point in her first-round match on another complicated sequence involving a challenge.Leylah Fernandez, a two-time Grand Slam finalist from Canada, said she likes the tradition of line judges at Wimbledon as the world cedes more to technology.Then again, she added, if “it did cost me a match, it would have been probably a different answer.”Andy Murray learned after his loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas that his shot, called out by a line judge, was in and could have changed the outcome of the match.Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is where Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion, found himself after his loss Friday afternoon. By the time he arrived at his news conference, he had learned that his slow and sharply angled backhand return of serve that landed just a few yards from the umpire had nicked the line.The point would have given him two chances to break Tsitsipas’s serve and serve out the match. When he was told the shot was in, his eyes opened with a startle, then fell toward the floor.Murray now knew what everyone else had seen.The ball had landed under the nose of the umpire, who confirmed the call, Murray said. He could not imagine how anyone could have missed it. He actually likes having the line judges, he added. Perhaps it was his fault for not using a challenge.“Ultimately,” he said, “the umpire made a poor call that’s right in front of her.” More

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      Billie Jean King Supports Talks With Saudi Arabia on Women’s Tennis Events

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      The LatestBillie Jean King, the leading architect of women’s professional tennis who is widely regarded as the first female athlete-activist, said Friday that she supported talks between the women’s tour and Saudi Arabia on holding competitions in the kingdom, despite its abysmal record on human rights.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” King said Friday at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the WTA, the women’s professional tour. “I would probably go there and talk to them.”After King’s comments, Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said women’s tennis was seriously evaluating partnerships with Saudi Arabia. He suggested that potentially holding events there would be a way to support “progress” for women, while the country is trying to become a destination for major sports.“Sometimes when you are in the position we are in, you need to support the change,” Simon said, referring to the tour’s commitment to gender pay equity and its loss of revenue during the pandemic and an 18-month suspension of operations in China over Peng Shuai.He said Saudi Arabia had “a long way to go,” especially in its laws banning homosexuality, but that change was underway in the country. “You want them to do what they are doing” and support that, he added.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” Billie Jean King said Friday.Kin Cheung/Associated PressWhy It Matters: Saudi Arabia continues to expand its footprint in sports.The comments from King and Simon were the strongest signal yet that Saudi Arabia is expanding and accelerating its efforts to become a part of not just men’s tennis but also women’s, among other sports like soccer, Formula 1 and golf. The Saudi wealth fund’s LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour after an acrimonious rivalry that included litigation and the loss of a handful of the tour’s biggest stars to the upstart league.Looking to avoid that scenario and always on the hunt for new investors, tennis executives have spoken openly of their ongoing discussions with Saudi officials about holding tournaments there as soon as this year. Saudi Arabia is bidding to become the host of the Next Gen Finals, a men’s event for 21-and-under players scheduled for December. Saudi Arabia’s bid includes the option of holding a women’s Next Gen event there as well.Simon traveled to Riyadh in February with other WTA executives and players for meetings with Saudi officials.Background: Players have expressed concern for their safety.The issue is especially complicated for the women’s tennis tour in part because there are a number of openly gay players, including Daria Kasatkina of Russia, who is ranked No. 11 in the world and often travels with her partner. The men’s tour does not have any players who are openly gay.Sloane Stephens, a member of the WTA Tour Players’ Council, said it was important for L.G.B.T.Q. players to feel safe while competing in Saudi Arabia.“That is part of the evaluation,” Stephens said. “We want to make sure everyone is safe and comfortable and feels supported.”King is openly gay as well, but she cited the WTA’s decision to play in Doha beginning in 2008 as a precedent for supporting countries who say they want to become more progressive. Simon said that, during his visit to Riyadh, he had noticed some of the same changes that Doha had said it wanted to make 15 years ago when women had “zero rights” and there were concerns about whether the players would be safe wearing short, sleeveless tennis outfits.“It’s about celebrating the betterment of women, that there is change coming,” Simon said. “I’m not Saying Saudi Arabia is a place we should be doing business with. They have a long way to go, but they are making changes.”What’s Next: The timetable is uncertain.Simon said there was no timetable for making a decision about the WTA going to Saudi Arabia. However, the tour has yet to announce a location for its season-ending Tour Finals. The tour and the Chinese government are currently negotiating the future of that event. The WTA suspended its operations in China for 18 months after player Peng Shuai was seemingly silenced after she appeared to accuse a former top government official of sexually assaulting her and the tour was unable to contact her. More

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      Women’s Tennis Tour Approves Deal for Pay Equity by 2033

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      The WTA Tour approved a plan to achieve pay equity at its biggest tournaments. But it won’t be fully implemented until 2033.The women’s professional tennis tour took another step on Tuesday toward closing the gender pay gap, as players and tournament officials committed to bringing their prize money in line with the men for the most significant tournaments, though the shift won’t be complete for 10 years.The move came after months of negotiations within the WTA Tour, which includes tournament organizers, as well as years of complaints from players and foot-dragging by tournament officials who for decades have paid female professionals a fraction of what they pay the men even in tournaments where they play the same best-of-three-sets format.In Rome, in May, the men competed for $8.5 million while the women competed for $3.9 million. The Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open, paid men $6.28 million while women competed for $2.53 million. The National Bank Open in Canada offered the men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women.“More and more players have been getting restless with this,” said Jessica Pegula, the world’s fourth-ranked player and a member of the WTA Players’ Council. “Equal pay started with the Slams, and I think a lot of people thought that meant every tournament.”Women and men have received equal prize money at all of the Grand Slam tournaments since 2007. As part of this deal, organizers of the next two tiers of tournaments — the 1000-level tournaments, which are the biggest competitions outside of the Grand Slams, and the 500-level tournaments — have committed to pay equity as well.All events featuring both men and women at those two levels will pay prize money equal to that on the men’s tour, the ATP, beginning in 2027. By 2033, all events at those two levels will offer the same prize money.Tour executives and tournament officials say the phased-in approach is essential for raising the additional revenue to fund the pay increases, but that has not sat well with all players.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa of Spain, who has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, said last month.Sloane Stephens, another Players’ Council member, said she understands the impatience of players who don’t want this benefit to kick in only after they have retired, but there are many existing contracts that prevent an immediate shift.“It may not be the fastest pathway, but we will get there,” she said. “If I wasn’t on the council, it would be hard for me to understand. This process takes time.”In an interview this spring, Steven Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said the time frame is necessary to allow the market to catch up with player sentiment, as the tour expands its marketing and renegotiates existing media contracts. Tournament organizers will also be able to take advantage of new rules that will make player attendance essentially mandatory at the biggest tournaments. Tournament organizers have long used the lack of a mandatory attendance requirement and a slight difference in the number of rankings points that players received as excuses for not providing equal pay. All of the tournaments with men and women will also now offer the same rankings points for both, making the competitions equal in every way and less confusing for fans.But while the pay equity deal offers an eventual solution to an old problem for tennis — and in all sports — it is hardly a panacea. With Wimbledon set to begin on Monday, women’s tennis continues to grapple with challenges.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa has said about the gap between men’s and women’s prize money at most tournaments.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockMost immediately, the tour has yet to announce the location of its season-ending tour finals in November. That issue was supposed to have been settled after the tour announced earlier this year that it would end its 18-month suspension of operations in China over the country’s treatment of the former player Peng Shuai. In a social media post in 2021, Shuai accused a government official of sexually assaulting her, and tour officials were subsequently unable to contact her.Simon said its boycott proved ineffective. But when the tour released its fall calendar earlier this month, it gave no location for the finals, though it included several tournaments in China. Tour officials have said they intend to hold the event there, but negotiations are continuing with the Chinese over the details of its existing 10-year deal that guaranteed nearly $150 million in prize money.There is also the larger issue of whether the WTA Tour will be able to further unify with the men’s tour, a move that experts say is vital for maximizing the potential of pro tennis. And looming over all of this is what role, if any, Saudi Arabia may play in the sport.Saudi Arabia, whose LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour, already hosts a lucrative men’s exhibition event, but so far it has shown an inclination to grow its investments in tennis without the acrimony and litigation that accompanied its aggressive push into golf.Saudi Arabia is a leading candidate to become the host of the ATP’s Next Gen Finals, a season-ending 21-and-under tournament that has been held in Milan since its inception in 2017, according to people with knowledge of the bidding process. The proposal to stage the competition, beginning later this year, includes a plan to launch a similar women’s event.The WTA has yet to commit to that or to staging any competitions in Saudi Arabia, where women only recently gained the right to drive and where an abysmal human rights record includes the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Simon traveled to the kingdom earlier this year for talks with government officials, though it’s not clear whether the WTA’s idea of further unification with the ATP includes a new tournament in Saudi Arabia.For now, erasing the pay gap is the first step, though some players do not understand the slow pace of change.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, who is ranked No. 6, said recently.In response, Simon has pointed to the deal the tour struck earlier this year with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm, which bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. Much of the investment will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts at a time when many of its players remain unknown to casual sports fans.Doing that may require some work on the part of the tournaments that goes beyond giving women more money.“We have to build these personalities,” Simon said.Women in tennis have also been increasingly vocal in recent months about the disparate treatment they have received. At the French Open, organizers put a men’s match in the featured prime-time slot on nine of 10 nights.The mixed tournaments almost always conclude with the men’s final on the last Sunday — an implicit peak — with the women’s final played the day before. At the Italian Open in May, Elena Rybakina and Anhelina Kalinina took the court at 11 p.m. local time in a largely empty stadium after rain and the men’s semifinals delayed their match for hours.After Tuesday’s announcement, at least the money will be equal — eventually.“It’s time for change,” Simon said. “The pathway is now there.” More

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      Sabalenka Skips French Open News Conference Citing Her Mental Health

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      The Belarusian player faced questions about the war earlier in the week from a Ukrainian reporter. On Friday, with the tournament’s blessing, she did not attend her post-match news conference.Aryna Sabalenka’s day began with a routine demolition of Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia that propelled the world’s second-ranked player, who is from Belarus, into the second week of the French Open as expected.But then Sabalenka put herself, the tournament and tennis once more at the center of the debate over sports and the war in Ukraine by refusing to attend the mandatory post-match news conference. She said she had felt unsafe during a previous news conference this week when a journalist from Ukraine asked Sabalenka about her support of President Alexandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, which has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine.“On Wednesday I did not feel safe in press conference,” Sabalenka was quoted as saying at the beginning of a transcript of her statements following her 6-2, 6-2 win over Rakhimova. “I should be able to feel safe when I do interviews with the journalists after my matches. For my own mental health and well-being, I have decided to take myself out of this situation today, and the tournament has supported me in this decision.”Cédric Laurent, a spokesman for the French tennis federation, the F.F.T., which organizes this Grand Slam tournament, one that has been dominated by geopolitics from the start, said federation officials learned after Sabalenka’s match that she would not participate in the news conference.French Open officials approved Sabalenka’s decision for Friday’s match but said no decision had yet been made about her news conferences during the rest of the tournament.Laurent said a “pool” had been selected to interview Sabalenka, but he declined to specify who was in the pool or if they were members of the independent news media or worked for the tournament or the women’s tennis tour, the WTA.A person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the matter said that only one person — a WTA employee — asked questions in the pool interview.A person familiar with the WTA’s actions who was also not authorized to speak on the matter said the organization supported Sabalenka’s desire not to participate in the news conference and the manner in which her statements were delivered.Sabalenka’s representatives at IMG, the sports and entertainment firm that is a unit of Endeavor, did not respond to requests for comment.The decision on Sabalenka comes two years after a confrontation with Naomi Osaka over attendance at news conferences led her to drop out of the French Open. Osaka announced on social media before the start of the tournament that she would not participate in the news conferences in order to protect her mental health and would pay whatever fines she received.After Osaka skipped the news conference following her opening-round win, she was fined $15,000 by the tournament referee, and the leaders of the four Grand Slam competitions — the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, and Wimbledon — threatened that she could be expelled from the French Open and face harsher penalties if she would not fulfill her media obligations.Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and one of the world’s top-ranked players at the time, pulled out the next day, announcing for the first time that she had been battling depression and planned to take a break from tennis. She returned seven weeks later, but stepped away once more in the fall of 2021. She battled injuries for much of 2022, and is now pregnant with her first child, though she has said she intends to return after the birth.In Sabalenka’s case, the decision came following two tense exchanges with Daria Meshcheriakova, a part-time journalist from Ukraine who works for Tribuna, a sports publication based in the country.During the first exchange Meshcheriakova asked Sabalenka what her message to the world was about the war and why she had claimed that Ukrainian players “hate” her. Sabalenka denied having said that and then spoke as openly as she ever had regarding the war.“Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, support the war. Nobody,” said Sabalenka, who lives in Miami. “How can we support the war? Nobody, normal people will never support it.”Three days later, after Sabalenka’s second-round match, Meshcheriakova challenged her about a letter she supposedly signed in 2020 in support of Lukashenko, “in times when he was torturing and beating up protesters in the street,” and about having participated in a New Year’s celebration with him.The letter that Sabalenka supposedly signed has not been made public, and her New Year’s celebration with the Belarusian president has not been independently verified, though there are many pictures of Sabalenka and Lukashenko together. In an interview Friday, Meshcheriakova, who left Kyiv for the Netherlands 10 days after the war began when missiles landed close to her apartment and whose parents still live in Russia-occupied Luhansk, said she had learned of the letter and the New Year’s celebration from prominent Belarusian journalists who had been forced to leave the country.“It’s true,” Meshcheriakova said, “and you saw how she responded.”Sabalenka said she had no comments about either question, then began to answer Meshcheriakova’s next question: “So you basically support everything because you cannot speak up? You’re not a small person, Aryna.”But Sabalenka quickly cut herself off when a moderator stated that Sabalenka had made it clear she would not comment further.“It’s all clear to us,” Meshcheriakova said to conclude the exchange.Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens on Sunday in the fourth round. Teresa Suarez/EPA, via ShutterstockElina Svitolina, who is a kind of unofficial leader of the Ukrainian members of the tour, said they simply wanted to hear from players representing Russia and Belarus that they believe their countries should end the war.“I think pretty much all Ukrainians would love to hear that from their side,” Svitolina said after her three-set win over Anna Blinkova of Russia.Like the other Ukrainian players, Svitolina did not shake Blinkova’s hand after the match.“Can you imagine the guy or a girl who is right now in a front line, you know, looking at me and I’m, like, acting like nothing is happening,” Svitolina said. “I’m representing my country. I have a voice.”Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens of the United States on Sunday in the fourth round. It’s not yet clear whether she will face reporters after the match.Meshcheriakova, who works as a political analyst in addition to covering sports, said she was returning to her day job after Saturday. She said she had been using vacation time to report on the tournament and was paying her own expenses.In Osaka’s case, tournament officials said that not requiring Osaka to attend news conferences could give her an unfair advantage over other players.Stephens, who is a member of the WTA Players’ Council, said Friday that she supported Sabalenka’s decision not to attend her news conference, and that every player had a right to feel safe performing her media obligations.“Everyone needs to feel good about themselves and what they’re doing,” Stephens said. “If she doesn’t feel safe, then she doesn’t need to be there. That’s the end of that.”Meshcheriakova said she had spoken with her parents earlier in the day. Her mother, she said, had been watching the Russian media coverage of the story, in which she was described using the Russian words for a Black cross-dresser. She implored her daughter to stop covering the tournament and to leave immediately.“Of course I told her I wouldn’t,” Meshcheriakova said. “I’m a journalist.” More

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      The Same Work but a Lot Less Pay for Women. Welcome to Tennis in 2023.

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      At the Italian Open, women will compete for less than half as much money as the men. Organizers say they intend to fix that, but not for two years.The best tennis players in the world descend this week on Rome, where men and women will play in the same best-of-three-sets format, on the same courts and in the same tournament, which sells one same-price ticket for both men’s matches and women’s matches.There is one massive difference between the two competitions, however: Men will compete for $8.5 million while the women will compete for $3.9 million.The huge pay discrepancy comes after two months of tennis that included three similarly significant tournaments in California, Florida and Madrid that featured men and women competing for the same amount of prize money. Men and women also get paid the same at the four Grand Slam tournaments, where men play best-of-five sets and the women play best of three.But not in Rome at the Italian Open. And not yet in the Cincinnati suburbs at the Western & Southern Open. Or in Canada, at the National Bank Open, where the men and women alternate between Toronto and Montreal each year.Angelo Binaghi, the chief executive of Italy’s tennis federation, announced recently that the Italian Open was committed to achieving pay equity by 2025 “to align itself with other major events on the circuit,” even though an expanded format will bring in additional money this year. For the next two editions of the tournament, women will have to do the same work for a lot less pay, which makes them feel, well, not great.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” said Paula Badosa, a 25-year-old from Spain who is among the leaders of a nascent player organization, the Professional Tennis Players Association. “They don’t inform us. They say this is what you get and you have to play.”A spokesman for the Italian federation did not make Binaghi available for an interview.“It’s really frustrating,” Ons Jabeur, who made two Grand Slam finals last year and is seeded fourth in Rome, said during an interview Tuesday. “It’s time for change. It’s time for the tournament to do better.”Steve Simon, the chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour, which organizes the women’s circuit on behalf of the tournament owners and players, said the disparate prize money was a reflection of a market that values men’s sports more highly than women’s, especially for sponsorships and media rights. He said the organization was working toward a solution that would strive to achieve pay equity at all of tennis’ biggest events in the coming years.“There is still a long way to go but we are seeing progress,” Simon said in an interview Monday.The explanations — and blame — for women in tennis continuing to be so shortchanged include ingrained chauvinism, bad agreements with tournament owners and the eat-what-you-kill nature of the sports business, where owners, officials and organizers often blame the athletes (rather than their incompetence) for not generating enough revenue. Then they use it as an excuse not to invest in the sport and keep athlete pay and prize money low.In tennis, women often receive second billing in mixed tournaments — less-desirable schedules on smaller courts, sometimes even lesser hotels. In Madrid last week, the participants in the women’s doubles final did not get a chance to speak during the awards ceremony. The men did.Organizers often tell the women they lack the star power of the men. At the French Open last year, Amélie Mauresmo, the tournament director and a former world No. 1 in singles, scheduled just one women’s match in the featured nighttime slot, compared to nine men’s matches, then explained that the men’s game had “more attraction” and appeal than the women’s game. She later apologized, but when second-billing can make it harder for women to achieve stardom, this self-fulfilling prophecy can lead to lower pay.In March, Denis Shapovalov of Canada, currently ranked 27th, published an essay in The Players’ Tribune criticizing the sport’s leaders for not being more unified.“I think some people might think of gender equality as mere political correctness,” wrote Shapovalov, whose mother has coached him and whose girlfriend, Mirjam Bjorklund of Sweden, plays on the women’s tour. “Deep down they don’t feel that women deserve as much.”The WTA has committed some unforced errors. At the most important mixed tournaments, attendance is mandatory for women and men. The WTA only requires participation at tournaments in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Madrid and Beijing, but not in Rome, Canada or Ohio, even though those events rank just behind the Grand Slams in importance. Also, the WTA awards slightly fewer ranking points than the men’s tour does in Rome, Canada and Ohio, where the women’s champion receives 900 points compared with 1,000 for the men.These minor differences have given tournament officials an excuse for paying women so much less, even though nearly all of the top women play the big optional events, unless they are injured. Organizers, however, say that without mandatory participation they can’t market the tournament as effectively, so local sponsors and media companies will not pay as much.“It’s time for change. It’s time for the tournament to do better,” said Ons Jabeur, who is seeded fourth in Rome.Marijan Murat/DPA, via Associated PressMarc-Antoine Farly, a spokesman for Tennis Canada, cited that difference when asked recently why the National Bank Open offered men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women. Despite that difference, Farly said, “Gender equity is very important for our organization.” He pointed to Tennis Canada’s recently released plan to seek gender equity at all levels during the next five years and to offer equal prize money at the National Bank Open by 2027. “Over the next few years, Tennis Canada fully intends to be a leading voice with the WTA on a development plan to close the WTA/ATP prize money gap.”Like most aspects of the tennis business, the formula for prize money requires a somewhat complicated explanation. Tournament owners guarantee a portion of revenues from tickets, domestic media rights and sponsorship sales for prize money. The tours contribute a portion using money from their own media rights and sponsorship deals as well as the fees the tournament owners pay the tours to acquire the licenses for the events. Simon said the WTA brings in substantially less money than the men’s circuit, the ATP Tour, which means it has substantially less money to contribute to prize money.That said, if equal prize money is important to tournament owners, they can choose to pay it. That is what the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, owned by the computer technology billionaire Larry Ellison, has agreed to do for more than a decade under his contract with the WTA.“The tournament views the event as a single product,” said Matt Van Tuinen, a spokesman for the tournament. “Paying them equally is the right thing to do.”Same goes for IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate that owns both the Miami Open and the Madrid Open. Both pay equally.In addition to Italy’s and Canada’s tennis federations, the United States Tennis Association, which has long bragged about its leadership in pay equity, did not award equal prize money at the Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open. Last year, men competed in Mason, Ohio, for $6.28 million. Women competed for $2.53 million. The U.S. Open became the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to offer equal prize money, in 1973, and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event in grand fashion this summer. The U.S.T.A. ran the Cincinnati-area tournament for more than a decade.Chris Widmaier, a spokesman for the organization, said the prize money was “dictated by the commensurate level of the competition as determined by each Tour.”In other words, since the Western & Southern was not a mandatory WTA event and the women competed for 10 percent less rankings points, paying them roughly 40 cents for each dollar the men received was justified.The U.S.T.A. last summer announced it was selling the tournament to Ben Navarro, the South Carolina financier and tennis enthusiast. Through a spokesman, he declined to be interviewed for this article.Help may be on the way.Earlier this year, CVC Capital Partners, the private equity firm, bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. The investment, which will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts, combined with a strategic plan being finalized that would eliminate the discrepancies between the men’s and women’s competitions at the mixed events, is supposed to help the WTA grow its revenues. That will allow the tour to contribute more to prize money and hopefully get tournament organizers to commit to pay equity in the coming years.The plan requires some patience, which is running thin among the players.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Jabeur said. More

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      WTA Lifts Suspension on Tournaments in China

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      The tour had paused events there after concerns about the Chinese star Peng Shuai went unresolved, but Steve Simon, its chief executive, said a different approach was needed.The WTA will resume operating tournaments in China later this year after having suspended events there in late 2021 because of concerns about the Chinese player Peng Shuai.The return, announced Thursday, is also a retreat.When Peng, one of China’s biggest tennis stars, accused a former top Chinese government official of sexual assault in a social media post in November 2021, the WTA and Steve Simon, its chairman and chief executive, took a strong stance.The WTA called for a “full and transparent” inquiry into Peng’s allegations, which were quickly censored online in China, and requested an opportunity to speak with her directly. The following month, the WTA suspended its Chinese tournaments and announced that the tour would not return until its demands were met.Sixteen months later, faced with a stalemate, the WTA has effectively blinked.“We’re currently convinced that the requests that we put forth are not going to be met,” Simon said in an interview this week. “And, with that, to continue with the same strategy doesn’t seem to make sense, and we need a different approach. Our members believe it’s time to resume our mission in China, where we believe we can continue to make a positive difference, as I think we have over the last 20 years when we’ve been there, while at the same time making sure that Peng is not forgotten and that we can, by returning, make some progress.”The WTA’s suspension of Chinese tournaments was more symbolic than substantive. China canceled nearly all international sports events in 2021 and in 2022 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Even without the WTA suspension, there almost certainly would have been no tour events in the country in 2022.But in a landscape in which global sports leaders have often kowtowed to China and its economic clout, the WTA’s move in 2021 still sent a strong message and made the tour an outlier. The men’s tennis tour, the ATP, did not follow suit and never suspended any of its Chinese events, including the Masters 1000 tournament in Shanghai. With Chinese authorities lifting their pandemic-related restrictions, it is scheduled to be played this year for the first time since 2019.Through the years, China has become a more important market for the WTA than for the ATP. The women’s tour held nine events in China in 2019, accounting for approximately one-third of the WTA’s annual revenue. The most significant of those tournaments was the season-ending WTA Finals in Shenzhen, which awarded a record $14 million in prize money in 2019, the first year of a lucrative 10-year deal.The tour, which has long relied heavily on revenue from the WTA Finals, took big financial hits when the event was canceled in 2020 and then moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2021 and to Fort Worth in 2022. In Guadalajara and Fort Worth, the WTA had to pay the significantly lower prize money figure, $5 million, itself.Simon said the tour will resume play in China in September. Though the schedule is not yet complete, he said he expected to hold eight tournaments there this year: regular tour events in Zhengzhou, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanchang, Hong Kong and Wuhan; the WTA Elite Trophy in Zhuhai; and the Finals, which Simon indicated would be staged in Shenzhen through 2031 to fulfill the original 10-year commitment.Simon said several of the events outside China that filled the late-season gap in 2022 will remain on the tour’s fall schedule this year, including tournaments in San Diego, Guadalajara and also in Tunisia.Last year’s WTA Finals was held in Fort Worth. The tournament will return to Shenzhen, China, this year, Steve Simon, the WTA chief executive, said.Cj Gunther/EPA, via ShutterstockThe WTA has faced major financial headwinds since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, with its overall prize money falling even further behind the men’s tour. Last month, the WTA announced a commercial partnership with CVC Capital Partners, a global private equity firm, which will make a $150 million investment in the tour.The return to China will further bolster the WTA’s finances, but Simon rejected the suggestion that the decision was all about the bottom line.“This decision wasn’t made based upon the Finals deal in any way, shape or form,” Simon said. “It was based upon what was in the best interest of the organization, and we felt this was in that best interest. Will it be good for our balance sheet and those types of things, yes it will, but that wasn’t the basis for the decision.”Simon said it was also important to women’s sports that women’s tennis have a presence in China, where the game has grown since the success of the women’s star Li Na, the first Grand Slam singles champion from China.Peng, who disappeared from public view for several weeks after posting her initial allegations in 2021, has since reappeared, including a meeting with the International Olympic Committee’s president, Thomas Bach, during the Beijing Games in February 2022. She has also given interviews to international media, claiming that she had been misunderstood and had not actually made sexual assault allegations.But the WTA has continued to question whether she is able to speak freely. Though Simon said the WTA has remained unable to establish direct contact with Peng, he said the tour has received assurances from “people close to Peng in the area that she is safe and living with her family in Beijing.”Despite the public standoff between the WTA and the Chinese government, Simon said that officials from the sport’s national governing body had provided the WTA with assurances that “our athletes and staff will be safe when they are in China.”The move back to China comes at a moment of rising political tension between China and the West, but other international events, including track and field’s Diamond League and the Asian Games, a multisport competition, are also returning to the country this year. Simon said the WTA had polled its players ahead of the decision.“We obviously had some players who were not supportive of a return, but the majority said it’s time to go back,” Simon said.Some tennis officials believed that Simon and the WTA had overreached by demanding a Chinese investigation into Peng’s accusations as a condition of lifting the suspension. However, the WTA also received widespread plaudits for its strong stance from human rights organizations and others. Last week, Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher with Human Rights Watch, urged the WTA to hold firm on its suspension.“If it’s reversed, the message really is the WTA eventually succumbed to business and to profit and the WTA is no different to other businesses,” Wang told Reuters.Does Simon feel the WTA is now letting people down?“We’re proud of the position we took,” he said. “If I had to make the decision over again, I would have made the same one, no question about it. We do think that people understand we took on a very difficult issue. We’ve done our best to get the results fulfilled, but unfortunately we have not been able to accomplish everything we wanted to. But we’ve also been able to make sure Peng is safe and secure, and she isn’t being forgotten or left behind. Things have to evolve. You can’t keep doing the same thing if it’s not working.” More