"Watching" the Game: And why tennis is sexist 

It's about 1:00 AM in Kolkata, a Saturday night or Sunday morning, and CoCo Vandeweghe faces a break point against Agnieszka Radwanska in the second set of her third round match at the US Open.

The crowd at Arthur Ashe sees her bang her racket on the hard court, the microphone catches the expletive that escapes her mouth in that brief outburst of pent up emotion. But you, dear Indian viewer, what else do you see? What can you see, that even the front-seat audience at the Arthur Ashe Stadium can't?

It is the slow movement of the camera, as the players take their stance. The camera begins with a shot of Vandeweghe's shoes, and begins a long climb upwards, until it focuses on her face, while her hands, invisible to the eyes of the television-viewer has bounced the tennis ball about four times, preparing to serve.

It is a moment so quick, a movement so subtle, that one almost doesn't recognise it. It is over in ten seconds. But in those ten seconds - the camera has sexualised and objectified a woman's body, turned us into voyeurs, and made us spend a Sunday writing about CoCo's body rather than her forehand.

Andy Murray, now being hailed as the feminist that the sport needs, was questioned in the past regarding his hiring of a female coach.

More recently, he slammed a reporter at a press conference when he made a casually sexist remark about Sam Querrey being the first US semifinalist at the Wimbledon since 2009, forgetting Serena Williams, one of the greatest players to have graced the tennis court.

Andy Murray may well be dubbed a feminist, and his response to the criticism he drew for hiring Mauresmo as a coach, as well as his comeback at the post-match conference are to be lauded.

But we must remember, that for Murray, these are remarks made about other people to which he must respond. Sure, he has been criticised for hiring a female coach. But really, it is Mauresmo who is under attack.

Yes, he makes a snappy comeback at the reporter, but it is Serena Williams that the reporter seems to have forgotten. Just as the voices of many other female players, who have expressed their opposition to the discrimination in the game, have been forgotten, but we have remembered Murray, a man, who stood up for women.

A lot has been said recently, and over the years, regarding the disparity of prize money in the game. While the Grand Slams, including the US Open, now award the same prize money for male and female players, these tournaments are mostly exceptions that prove the rule. While the US Open began to offer equal prize money from 1973, Wimbledon has only began to do so from 2007.

More than forty years after the exhibition match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, dubbed "The Battle of the Sexes", grabbed the attention of the world, the battle for equal pay in all tournaments continues, and continues to be overlooked and ignored. A year ago, Novak Djokovic, then ranked the best male tennis player in the world argued that men should be paid more because it was the men's game that attracted more viewers and by extension, sold the greater number of tickets.

Djokovic forgets, perhaps all too conveniently, that the audience of tennis, or most other popular sports in the world today, stretch far beyond the court. Djokovic leads us to the business side of sports, but he cannot step out of the arena and into the drawing room where his backhand down the line is watched and rewatched by an audience sitting comfortably in their couches, thousands of miles away.

He does not seem to remember the millions that go into buying TV rights, the advertisements that the viewer must suffer between games and sets. Of course, to keep the business going, the television channel will broadcast only the high-profile matches - that of top-seeded players, and the outside courts will remain largely ignored.

But then, if you could afford it, wouldn't you watch the world number one rather than world number 116 irrespective of their sex? The choice of the match depends not so much on the sex of the player, as it does on their ranking. The television adds several elements to the experience of watching sports, most importantly, the intervening gaze of the camera, that directs the eyes of the viewer.

Two important questions arise at this point: who is the viewer? And secondly, what does the camera see, and therefore show, when it records a match between female players?

Let us answer the second question first.

It directs us to the players' legs, her waist, her bustline, and finally her face. It directs us to the pendant around her neck. And why does it direct us so? Well, to use Novak's own words, it is what "attracts the viewers".

This brings us to the first question: who is the viewer? There are two steps to the answer. First, the camera. The camera plays a dual role in this context. It is the viewer, in that it records the match, but it is also the director, in that it controls the gaze of the second-stage viewer - the audience sitting at home. At all three stages - the camera as viewer, the camera as director, and the viewer in front of the television set - the subject is assumed to be male. Actually, this assumption begins with the final category - the viewer at home. Who watches sports? The sexist assumption is - Men.

Not just any men, heterosexual cis men. The second assumption is that such men must be shown the image of a woman in a particular way in order for them to be "attracted" to a tennis match. And the conclusion to be drawn from the two assumptions is the adoption of the "male gaze" while viewing and broadcasting a tennis match between two female players.

The game is a business, after all, and we all know what to sell.