Men are game for risks
MALE tennis players are more reckless and overconfident on the court, while women are more graceful in defeat, a new study has revealed.
As fans prepare to watch this weekend’s Australian Open finals, a Deakin University study has found gender plays a large role in risk-taking behaviour — at least for professional players.
Deakin Business School lecturer Dr Aydogan Ulker, economics chair Professor Nejat Anbarci and a researcher from South Korea’s Sogang University have analysed almost 1500 line-call challenges from 480 ATP and WTA professional tennis matches.
Their research found men and women made a similar number of challenges, but with major discrepancies in their rates of success.
“The main point of difference came during a tiebreak, the when game the outcome was in the o of balance,” Dr Ulker er said.
“At tiebreaks, s, women players are e more likely to reverse e the umpire’s unfavourrable call with a correct ct challenge, while men n are more likely to make e an unsuccessful challlenge. more “Men likely are also to make a lot o ‘embarrassing’ line-call ll challenges at tiebreaks aks — which we defined as challenges that are out by 50mm or more — and are more likely to be provoked into doing so if their opponent is leading the match.”
The Th research also found women were more graceful in defeat than their male counterparts.
“At tiebreaks, men try to win at all costs, while women appear to accept losing more gracefully when they are behind in the match, rather than making embarrassing line-call challenges,” Dr Ulker said. “The overconfidence of men players leads them to make more risky challenges, while women players make fewer risky and embarrassing challenges in similar situations.”
More skilled men were also more likely to make poor challenges, while more skilled women were less likely to do so, the research found.
“The higher a man’s player ranking, the more likely he is wrong to make challenge an embarrassingly te during a tiebreak,” Dr Ulker said.
“The opposite is true for women — women of a higher rank are less likely to challenge, and more likely to reverse an umpire’s unfavourable tiebreak call when they do.”