CF, we are tennis fans. I've been watching and playing the game for 40 years. I know what games are good and which are not and what is worth watching... or at least I can have an opinion and so can everyone else.
If you think Wozniacki had a point please kindly post an argument for it. Lame insults won't cut it.
Kevin Curren, of whom you claim to be a fan, played a fast, aggressive, entertaining game. That's the game that deserves to be on a show court. Of all people, you should know that.
I get tired of seeing the same nonsense on every tennis, golf or sports message board from guys bashing women's sports. Yes, it's true, really fit professional male athletes are faster and more powerful than really fit professional female athletes. Gee, are you proud you made this discovery? That doesn't mean that the women's game isn't worth watching. I don't have time to look up statistics but I am sure the tennis that the ATP plays does not differ significantly from that played by the WTA in stats like unforced errors, double faults and is probably pretty similar in winners - I'll give you that your average men's match will almost certainly feature quite a few more aces, but that leads to a
less exciting match. Women understand the game of tennis just as well as men, they employ strategy just as well as men and they craft points every bit as well as men do.
The problem that I think a lot of the chauvinistic male tennis fans have is that they have this inaccurate amalgamated and stereotyped view of women's tennis that every match looks like a pair of underpowered players like Sara Errani wafting balls across the net to Aga Radwanska, both of whom might be able to outrun each other's second serves, accompanied by the courtside screaming created by Sharapova or Azarenka. They also have this view that provided she's not too much of a headcase in a given fortnight, that there's little point to watching women's tennis since Serena will overpower everyone else and win the championship; ironically, I bet most of those same guys probably would argue that Graf, not Serena, is the WTA GOAT, and will continue to do so even if Serena's GS total surpasses Court's. They seem to forget that recent years have shown us that early round matches at the slams are not a foregone conclusion even for men as accomplished as Nadal or Federer.
Are you likely to get a bit more exciting match, everyone in good health and playing well, watching Federer play Nishikori or Monfils play Wawrinka? Probably - the very best and fittest men do tend to have a few more exciting points. But I'd much rather watch Simona Halep play Gabrine Mugaruza or Ivanovic play Azarenka (with the volume muted) than Isner play Kevin Anderson or Raonic play Karlovic. And in her prime, I'd rather have watched Martina Hingis play than any man in history, her points were so well planned and executed so precisely and accurately.
Here's how you know that the explanations that the macho-in-their-own-minds types give are bogus: all of them would claim they'd rather watch men's tennis from any period than the WTA of today. Go look up some so-called classic men's matches from the 70's and the dawn of the graphite racquet era. The tennis being played in those matches was lackadaisical - even a Borg-Connors GS match looked like the guys were mailing it in at about 60-70% effort on the vast majority of the points. Today's WTA players, with a few exceptions, are more fit than the guys were back then and give more effort than the male heroes of yesteryear, on the whole. Yes, Jimmy did make some impressive scrambles, but on most points he looks like a modern pro just starting to warm up or finishing up a practice session. Sneer all you want at Marion Bartoli's physique or luck of the draw in more than one tournament, she still played a lot of exciting shots.
Unfortunately, the one fact that is not made up is that based on actual spectator popularity, there is no doubt that more people watch the men's singles games than the women's. Largely, this is because of two factors, neither of which have to do with the quality of the tennis being played:
a) Chauvinistic men feel that the men's game is superior and are the ones buying the tickets or who have ESPN semi-permanently set onto their TVs.
b) Women are, on average, rather pathetic supporters of women's sports. Out of the past dozen or so women's Div. I college volleyball, basketball or hockey games I've attended, there were visibly more males than females in the stands in all of them. Male golf fans outnumbered female fans at least 2:1, maybe 3:1 at the US Women's Open I attended a few years ago. Most women spend no time watching sports other than gymnastics, ice skating, or diving, unless it's a few minutes of the Superbowl or Olympics. The biggest problem with women's sports in 2015 isn't inequality compared to male sports, it's apathy by females of all ages who would rather be chatting over coffee, going to "hot yoga" classes, watching reality TV, or taking their daughters to dance or singing lessons than watching or participating in sports.
But we also have at least a 20:1, maybe 50:1 television coverage of singles to doubles matches despite the fact that a lot more people play doubles than singles, and there are a billion or two soccer fans who would announce that a 0-0 tie that took the better part of 2 hours of nothing occurring is "Brilliant!!!!" so not all that happens in sports in general or tennis in particular makes any logical sense.
The bottom line is that there are good matches and bad matches in both men's and women's tennis. I firmly believe that the majority of men badmouthing women's sports, including tennis, have mommy issues, dating issues or other non-sports-related issues involving women that fuel their biases more than the actual disparity between the males and females playing the sport. And sadly, these chauvinistic attitudes drive away females from sports resulting in fewer women participating and a lower overall level of competition in women's sports.
