Game Point: Pete Sampras comes across as a tad sexist
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...November 2, 2009
Game Point is Busted Racquet’s roundup of facts, figures and links about the tennis world. Today’s edition will be Agassi-free.
Love – The picture above is of Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, Nuria Llagostera Vives and a bunch of Spanish musicians after the women won the doubles title at the WTA’s year-end Sony Ericsson Championships this weekend in Doha. I have no idea what those guys were going to do if Martinez Sanchez and Vives had lost. Maybe a little of this, but with la guitarra instead of el trombón.
15 – With her win in the singles event at Doha, Serena Williams broke the single-season women’s record for prize money, with more than $6.5 million earned in 2009. This reflects both well and poorly on the state of women’s tennis. On one hand, Williams has earned more than any man did on tour this year (although that will likely change over the next few weeks since the men’s season isn’t yet over), a nice change from the past when there was a stark inequality in men’s and women’s prize money. On the other hand, the fact that Serena was able to best the mark by $1 million despite playing in only 18 tournaments (and not giving it her all in a few of those) says how little competition there was at the top in ‘09.
30 – Ahead of an exhibition he’ll play against Todd Martin on Nov. 7, Pete Sampras gave an interview to the Atlanta Journal Constitution in which he discusses the future of American tennis and his thoughts on women’s tennis (which come across as sort of sexist), but not a certain double-initialed rival and his use of substances that rhyme with Beth.
40 – For the first time since his loss to Juan Martin del Potro in the finals of the U.S. Open, Roger Federer took the tennis court today. He won easily over a Belgian qualifier at the Swiss Indoors.
Game – Alright, I can’t get Sampras’s thoughts on women’s tennis out of my head. Here’s the question and his answer:
Q: Do you watch women’s tennis?
A: You can ask someone like Kobe [Bryant] if he watches the [WNBA Los Angeles] Sparks. If I have time — I’ve got two kids — to watch something, it’s not going to be ladies’ tennis. It’s going to be basketball or football. Ladies’ tennis, there’s some great players, but it’s not anything I’m interested in.
Is Pete really comparing women’s tennis to the WNBA? That’s a huge slap in the face. The WNBA is practically unwatchable (and, judging by the ratings, it’s literally unwatchable too). Nobody mentions it in the same breath as the NBA. The only similarities are that there’s a basket, a ball and hardwood.
Women’s tennis, on the other hand, is just as, if not more, popular than men’s tennis. They’re on equal footing. To compare women’s tennis to a fledgling league that hemorraghes money and is kept afloat only because David Stern is too stubborn to pull the plug is insulting … but not as insulting as saying "ladies’" tennis. Who’s playing the game, Pete, your grandma?
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Not to mention that Sampras is 100% wrong. Kobe is often in attendance at Sparks games during the Summer.