According to some players, the plan to unify the remuneration for male and female tennis players is collapsing. Polish Iga Šwiateková complained at the Tournament of Champions that she felt exhausted, and the WTA plans to increase the number of mandatory events in the coming years.
The professional women’s circuit came up with a bold plan this year to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the WTA’s existence. She will take another step to ensure that not only at the Grand Slams, but also at other tournaments, female players have comparable prize money to men.
Tennis players have been calling for this for a long time, but they had no idea how the tour management wanted to achieve it. In the following years, the number of mandatory tournaments should increase. There will be 10 of those from the 1000 category, i.e. the biggest right after the Grand Slams, and some of them will be spread over two weeks just like the big four companies.
“And that’s wrong. It will affect our physical and mental health. With multiple two-week events, there will be less time for free time, for our loved ones, for regeneration,” says former world number one Iga Šwiateková.
That’s not all. There should also be more events from the WTA 500 category, which are also important for female players due to ranking points, 17 of them will appear in the calendar. The organizers hope that this will attract more top female players and thus more media attention and sponsors.
“It’s just trying to play more and more and get more money, but the WTA doesn’t care about our health at all. I’ve been playing professionally for four years, of which I’ve played two really intense seasons with all the tournaments, and I already feel that if it continues like this, too I won’t last long on the circuit,” said the only twenty-two-year-old Polish woman.
But at the same time, she added that she feels a great determination among the players to do something about the situation and make it clear to the WTA that it is necessary to reconsider the plans.
“For the first time in the four years on the circuit, I feel that we are all players together. Whether it’s the ones at the top or the ones lower in the ranking. We’re all pulling together and we want change. We think there’s room for change in the WTA calendar, which will bring some kind of compromise and improve our conditions,” declared Šwiateková.
Simon responded to the criticism with a letter in which he stated that the WTA has the same view as the female players on a number of things and has started working on improvements. Among other things, it created several working groups consisting of members of the association’s management as well as representatives of tournaments and the players’ council.
Their task is, for example, to check the composition of the calendar and the quality of services for female tennis players at tournaments. They will also deal with the improvement of marketing and promotion on social networks, as well as the fluctuating quality of balls at tournaments. The conclusions should be presented in mid-November.
The current world number two admitted that she is already exhausted from this season, but it is not at all evident at the ongoing Tournament of Champions. After two matches, she has two clear wins on her account and she even gave both Markéta Vondroušová and the American Cori Gauffová a canary.
Editing of the match between Markéta Vondroušová and Iga Šwiateková:
Šwiateková – Vondroušová | Video: Associated Press
2023-11-02 15:58:12
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