Women’s Tennis, Laid Bare: Mean Girls, Different Worlds, and Compelling Stories

Doesn’t this almost sound like Tina Fey-penned dialogue?

⇥⇥“Who’s the prettiest?” (Ana Ivanovic) says, buttering a roll, her slim wrist holding up a Rolex the size of a child’s fist. “Who’s the most popular, the most fashionable, who’s getting the most coverage?” She smiles sorrowfully to acknowledge that, when it comes to these contests, she tends to do quite well. “In the men’s game, they’re all friends. But we’re not friends. You can be on the tour for 10 years and still not be friends. It’s sad.“That’s the second paragraph of a sprawling feature on women’s tennis in The Guardian, in which Emma Brockes reveals a tour fractured by its schism between stars and aspiring stars, aggrieved by disparity with its male counterpart in earnings and coverage, and far more compelling underneath the surface.Venus Williams—who cops to designing her derriere-displaying outfit from the French Open for just that purpose—lives in what amounts to a different world with sister Serena, inured from the pressures of a globe-trotting tour of duty by form that doesn’t require weekly tune-ups and fortunes that enable them to pick and choose their events. They don’t have to worry about the smaller sums women take home at nearly all non-Grand Slam events, and can’t complain about being shafted from show court placement for lesser-regarded and more photogenic players.

That sort of concern is the domain of players like Elena Baltacha, who wonders about a stolen lunch voucher, and Cara Black, a Zimbabwean who laments that fewer events exist for women. Brockes deftly covers the players’ dismay with some systemic issues, and also allows them their shots at each other. “There is a natural barrier to being friends with someone whom you may, shortly, be called on to destroy in public,” she writes, “but the men seem to manage it better,” and the spin on certain shots at the Williams sisters (“aloof” and “entitled”) is both vicious and not just from the players.

There’s much, much more—mandatory press conferences are sometimes covered by single journalists out of pity; modeling schedules can throw players’ conditioning out of order; older players see a brasher generation on their heels—in the article, fascinating look inside a world that rarely merits this sort of depth. And if you’ve got more than a passing interest in women’s tennis, it makes for enlightening and sobering reading before Wimbledon begins on Monday.

(HT: Jon Wertheim.)

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