Williams coach in plea for parity
SERENA Williams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou has lambasted the financial inequity in professional tennis as revolting, demanding the sport address the issue as it grapples with coronavirus.
The Frenchman said the COVID-19 crisis underlined the gaping disparity between the sport’s multi-millionaire superstars, including his most famous charge Serena Williams, and lower-ranked players. Mouratoglou has urged tennis officials to use the suspension of the circuit to find a way to save the careers of players who were struggling financially even before the global pandemic.
Posting on Twitter, Mouratoglou wrote: “Players ranked outside the top 100 are barely breaking even and most of them are forced to fund their careers to keep playing professionally. Their lives are a financial struggle.
“Unlike basketball or football players, tennis players aren’t covered by fixed annual salaries. They’re independent contractors.
“They’re paying for their travels. They’re paying fixed salaries to coaching staff, while their own salaries depend on the number of matches they win. I find it revolting that the 100th-best player of one of the most popular sports in the world — followed by an estimated one billion fans — is barely able to make a living out of it.”
While the US Open was the first to pay equal prizemoney to men and women in 1973, followed by the Australian Open, Tennis Australia has led the way in ploughing more money into qualifying and early rounds. But Mouratoglou believes it is scandalous players ranked just outside the top 100 now cannot survive.
“So, what happens when players are forced out of work for an undefined period of time? Well, they don’t get paid,” Mouratoglou wrote.
“Some of them are giving up on their dreams.”