Is calling Serena ‘ best female player ever’ a sexist statement?

During a National Public Radio interview on Sunday, tennis legend John McEnroe confi rmed a professional opinion from his new memoir, but seriously, calling Serena Williams “the best female player ever – no question.”

Interviewer Lulu GarciaNavarro responded, “Some would say she’s the best player in the world [ male or female]. Why qualify it?” Presumably, Garcia- Navarro was suggesting that Williams is a better tennis player than any man as well, including current No. 1- ranked Andy Murray. It’s hard to adequately quantify the idiocy of this question.

No one who knows anything about tennis thinks the top female players in the world are better than their male counterparts. In 1998, Williams played a competitive set against Karsten Braasch, then ranked 203rd on the ( men’s) ATP Tour. After playing a round of golf and drinking several beers, Braasch defeated Williams 6- 1 and her sister Venus 6- 2.

In 2013, Murray himself en- tertained press inquiries about a similar “battle of the sexes” exhibition. Williams told latenight talk show host David Letterman, “If I were to play Andy Murray, I’d lose 6- 0 – 6- 0 in fi ve to six minutes. The men are a lot faster. They serve harder, they hit harder. It’s just a diff erent game.”

At the time, no one called Williams’ comments sexist – because they weren’t. And the only purpose stupid comments like Garcia- Navarro’s serve is to distract people from legitimate examples of social injustice. Instead of discussing what should be done about cultures in which young girls are denied formal education and wives are put to death for being raped, social media users instead rushed to defend Williams in an argument whose outcome was never in doubt.

To his credit, McEnroe didn’t back away from the debate, instead suggesting that men and women compete on the same tour and allow honest competition to settle the matter. It was a whimsical idea, far too logical for today’s hypersensitive, overvictimized American culture.