Women's tennis has a few questions to answer

Gilles Simon generated quite a flutter with his seemingly outrageous comments on women’s tennis. The reaction was weighed towards opposition and rejection of what Simon had to say and propose. Serena Williams went on to win her 5^th Wimbledon title which has resulted in Victoria Azarenka sitting at the top of WTA rankings. In the last 5 years, the numero uno ranking has fluctuated 17 times between 9 players. Out of the 21 slams during that period, we have witnessed 12 different champions! During the last 5 years, there have been 3 occasions when the player holding the top spot didn’t have a slam to her name. Serena Williams has won the most slams during this period with 6 titles, but managed to stay at the top of the table for only 66 weeks during the last 5 years. She has been off the number one ranking for about a year and a half now.

These are too erratic stats for a sport! Either they suggest extensive close competition or too much fluctuation; those following women’s tennis would vehemently pick the latter option. Simon’s thoughts appear sexist and outrageous for the way they were articulated, but what we can draw from it is the concern of quality tennis from the women’s circuit. If anybody is suggesting lack of effort from the women players or ‘less work more pay kind’ of thing, then that demands opposition as was the case with Simon’s statement.

French Open winner, ousted in 4th round in Wimbledon

Women’s tennis was, is and will remain a popular event, for the obvious reasons. Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic et al. will always generate decent on & off-field following but recent history in the women’s circuit suggests that there is absence of words like dominance, monopoly and authority. Barring Kim Clijsters with US Open 2010 and Australian Open 2011, nobody has managed to win back-to-back grand slams for the last 8 years! Sometimes it is good to have different champions over a period of time, but for that to happen you want to have the champion beaten in close semi-finals or finals. Women’s tennis has failed to provide such action for some while now; defending champions are ousted early, one slam champions suffer pre-quarterfinal exits on different surfaces.

There could be reasons for such results, there could be nuances to the above stats but it would take some real digging to back thoughts of quality of women’s tennis dropping down. In men’s competition, a contest between Federer, Nadal or Djokovic undoubtedly provides action to its billing. Women’s tennis lacks such match-ups or battles; you almost get a sense it is a discipline where anybody with two weeks of good form can win a Grand Slam!

Any and every sport needs its popular poster faces to propel the sport to prosper, grow and inspire generations; women’s tennis has them aplenty. To back such role models you need constant competition of the highest quality, otherwise the sport is exhausted with its global following, restricting the set of followers to individual players. Women’s tennis is entering an interesting phase with lots of players in the fray, variety in the kind of tennis and champions of different nations. Hopefully for the next few seasons, we’ll get to discuss women’s tennis’ on-field stories as much as their off-field ones!