Moore’s longtime colleague at Indian Wells and predecessor as tournament director, Steve Simon, became the WTA’s CEO last fall.
Advertisement
“Novak Djokovic, as much as I love him, clearly doesn’t understand why, when women and men play in combined tournaments, they must be paid equally”, added Navratilova. However, while praising the women for their efforts on equal pay, Djokovic said that men should “fight for more”.
Among other controversial suggestions, CEO Raymond Moore claims the women’s game has ridden the coat-tails of the men’s for many years. “Get on your knees, which is offensive enough, and thank a man… we, as women, have come a long way”.
Moore also singled out Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard and Spaniard Garbine Muguruza as being among the “very attractive prospects” on the WTA circuit tour, before explaining that they were “physically attractive and competitively attractive”.
When asked if Moore’s comments could have been misunderstood, Serena again fried the tournament official. “We shouldn’t have to drop to our knees at any point”. He made his comments in a session with reporters before Sunday’s finals, and they quickly appeared on social media. There are probably a lot of female tennis players out there right now who would love for nothing more than to really give Moore a piece of their mind, but King chose the high road here, which is always the best option.
Williams acknowledged that she was surprised to find gender-related controversy continuing to crop up in a sport that has pioneered equal compensation for women competitors – sometimes over the objections of their male counterparts.
“You know, there’s only one way to interpret that”, she said.
While sitting in press minutes after her finals loss at Indian Wells, Serena Williams blasted the events’s, Raymond Moore, who was under flame Sunday for making obsolete, sexist remarks before the match.
“Obviously, I don’t think any lady ought to be down on there knees expressing gratitude toward anyone such as that”, Williams said.
The men’s game “should fight for more [prize money] because the stats are showing that we have much more spectators on the men’s tennis matches”, said the Serbian player.
As ESPN analyst Pam Shriver pointed out, Moore’s remarks are ironic “on a day we should have been celebrating Serena getting back to a final and all the forgiveness and recovery made after all that happened 15 years ago”. The beast, as they say, was hardly contained.
In addition to selling out of tickets for its women’s final before its men’s contest, the U.S. Open also saw a spike in ticket prices, as fans clamored to see Williams vie for winning all four majors in the same season.
“I mean both”, he answered.
“You know, the hormones and different stuff”.
On average, as reported by BBC, there were “973 million viewers for Men’s 2015 ATP tour [compared to the] 395 million for Women’s 2015 WTA events and finals”. I think that’s one of the reasons why maybe we should get awarded more. Wrong, but reasonable. But it is wrong, because Serena has been around far longer than Federer and Nadal and has carried women’s tennis just as much as they’ve carried men’s – probably more, in fact.
Advertisement
‘If we rise above that and keep working hard in everything we do, we’re better.
