Tennis organizers are beginning to possess a power only science fiction dreamed up -- time travel. When some of them speak about women in tennis, it’s like we all traveled back to the 1950s. The latest exemplar of this trend is Ion Tiriac, organizer of the Madrid Open, former tennis star, current billionaire and fan of long legs.
Leaders in the tennis community continue to say idiotic things about women
Stop.
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James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
When Tiriac was asked about whether women players should be paid equally he took a well-worn path of saying it was about how much money is being brought to the table by men and women’s tennis, but he made sure he also said plenty of creepy stuff too.
“I like, very much more, women than men,” said Tiriac, a 76-year-old Romanian billionaire. “All my life, I’ve done that. The longer the legs theirs are, the more beautiful I think they are. Even in tennis, they’re gracious and so on. But I don’t see the equal prize money being the status. Maybe they deserve more? Pay more the women if they deserve.”
What have we established here?
- Tiriac wants you to know very clearly that he likes women.
- Tiriac wants you to know how much he loves long legs on women.
- Maybe women should be paid more -- if they deserve it.
What hasn’t been established?
- Literally anything about tennis.
This is only part of his thought process when it comes to equal pay in tennis. There’s this ongoing issue of whether women “deserve” to get paid equally or more, which simply doesn’t enter the discussion when talking about the men’s game.
"But I think we have to go and calculate how much money are the men putting on the table, and how much the women, with TV rights. Because otherwise we have to compensate, and compensate, and compensate, and you cannot compensate forever. For that reason, it's a beautiful sport, but I don't think the women can complain that they don't earn enough money."
Tiriac says that to answer whether women deserve equal or greater pay revenue needs to be calculated. Fair enough. The question is: Why isn’t this already being calculated? One would think that the revenue being brought in by the men’s and women’s draw is the very most basic information a tournament organizer would need, and someone like Tiriac could have at the snap of his fingers. Instead of answering the question people are interested in, he didn’t have any answers. Instead he asked more, while only answering the un-asked -- in this case his sexual preference and love of long legs.
These questions can’t be answered until this cycle ends. The constant and routine answering of questions with questions, claims tournament organizers haven’t seen the numbers and pushing the issue off onto the next tournament organizer who will be asked them. Only those at the top levels of tennis can affect change in a way that sees the sport move forward. However, there are discussions to have -- real, honest, transparent discussions. There’s no ability to have those discussions while tournament organizers continue to focus on women’s legs, or how they should get on their knees and thank men, or having the sport’s biggest stars reduce women to nothing more than mothers. It’s insulting, uncalled for and turns the amazing athletes in your sport into long-legged pieces of meat.
