Tennis prize money debate: Perhaps the men should play best-of-three sets

“Ready, willing and able - all you have to do is ask us.” With that one statement, Stacey Allaster, the CEO of the WTA Tour, has turned the equal prize money debate in the sport on its head. For a while now, the men have been grunting out loud as to why the women earn as much as they do at the four grand slams. And they have two main arguments – firstly, the men play best-of-five sets at the slams whereas the women play best-of-three. Andy Murray summed up this view in a recent interview, “I think the women should play best-of-five sets. I don’t see why they couldn’t do it. It would mean the days in the Slams are a little bit longer. And maybe it doesn’t have to be from the first rounds. I think either the men go three sets or the women go five sets. I think that’s more what the guys tend to complain about, rather than the equal prize money itself.” [caption id=“attachment_1147357” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Should the women start playing best-of-five sets or the men start playing best-of-three? Getty Images[/caption] And the second argument is that the men are in the midst of a golden era with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Murray taking their games and the sport to new heights. This perspective is echoed by Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsy, a member of the ATP Player Council, “My point of view was just about the entertainment. If you just watch how it is working in every other sport, even for the singers, you’re just paid by the public directly. My point was that I have the feeling that men’s tennis is actually more interesting than women’s tennis. As in any business or anything, you just have to be paid just about that. It’s not because we play five sets and they are playing three. The message was this: men should earn more. I still think so. It’s not even the physical cost - five sets or three, this issue is marginal.” The men can cry hoarse all they want but let’s face it - none of the slams are likely backtrack on the equal prize money issue since that would invoke a public relations disaster. As far as entertainment and popularity goes, sure the men seem to have the better box-office appeal in recent years but these things tend to be cyclical. In the late 1990s, when Martina Hingis, the Williams sisters and Anna Kournikova battled with veterans Steffi Graf, Monica Seles and Lindsay Davenport, the women were the bigger box-office draw. And looking down the road, take away the Big Four from the men’s game, and the future of the men’s ATP Tour seems to rest on the unsteady shoulders of Milos Roanic, Grigor Dimitrov, Bernard Tomic, Kei Nishikori and Jerzy Janowicz – a generation that is yet to prove their mettle on the court and their clout off it. Instead it’s the women who have a bunch of exciting youngsters from where that heady combination of champion material and advertiser’s delight is likely to emerge– Americans Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys, Britain’s Laura Robson, Puerto Rican Monica Puig, Canadian Eugenie Bouchard, French Kristina Maldenovic and Croatian Donna Vekic. Rather than the women playing best-of-five matches, why don’t the men play best-of-three? For a long time, the men have complained about the length of the tennis calendar and how they need to protect themselves from injuries. Wouldn’t a best-of-three sets format complement that perspective? But that’s a road that the men are unlikely to go down. After all, the best-of-five sets format has an alluring appeal – often taking the tennis and the drama to heights just not possible if the men were playing best-of-three. Look back at some of the most memorable matches in recent history and you’d inevitably find that a majority of them coming from the slams and going down to the wire. Economics tell us that a rational man would like to have shorter working hours for the same pay. But that theory of rationality does not seem to apply to the ATP professionals. Instead, they would rather have the women play best-of-five to justify their equal pay. Surely, the men are not acting rationally in this case. And that’s probably because they have a vested interest in playing best-of-five at the slams. They know that the tennis and the fans would not be as engaging if they played best-of-three. The men would be better served by focussing on what they want for themselves, rather than comparing notes with the women. The men seem to have hit all the right aces in recent times – from producing some classic matches on the court to leading the fight for increased prize money for players down the pecking order. But on this issue, it looks like they’re going to double fault.