COURTING EQUALITY
ONE of the biggest surprises at Wimble- don was when Britain's Samantha Smith walked out with her prize-money cheque for £25,000 for reaching the fourth round of the singles. She had not won a match in her previous five attempts there.
Well-rewarded, you might think, but not to the women who are seeking more. The argument goes on behind the scenes between the respective chairmen of the Grand Slams in the blue corner and the Women's Tennis Association in the pink corner. The battleground is the thorny issue of equal prize money.
The whole question of the prize-money ratios between the men and the women has bedevilled the three Grand Slam tour- naments (Wimbledon and the French and Australian Opens) which have retained a differential to reflect the depth, greater popular appeal and quality of the men's game since the US Open broke ranks 25 years ago and conceded the principle. When market forces prevail (which they don't at the Grand Slam tournaments), the maximum purse the women can obtain for playing when separated from the men is just under $1 million whereas the men play for more than $2.5 million.
Despite hard-nosed marketing directors throughout the world choosing to associate themselves with the men and paying con- siderably more for the privilege, it seems increasingly likely that the chairmen of the world's biggest events will buckle under pressure and pay the women the same as the men from 1999 onwards. This would be a total capitulation to political correctness, following the constant harping over a quar- ter of a century by vocal and belligerent American feminists. Any semblance of logic would have been cast aside to accom- modate a feminist agenda which, in the USA at least, has prevented value judg- ments being made even when the ' argu- ments to the contrary are largely irrefutable.
The warfare within tennis is symptomatic of what is happening in society at large. The tennis girls portray themselves as vic- tims of the prejudices of a patriarchal ten- nis world. By manipulative spin-doctoring and glossing over the salient facts (if their game is so appealing, why do they have no overall tour sponsor for next year and why are sponsors not prepared to give them the same prize money as the men?) the women have cleverly avoided proper scrutiny of the issues.
Paradoxically, women's tennis has had to repackage itself in a form it believes is more acceptable to men, make itself more `user-friendly' and abandon unrealistic ide- als and feminist causes in order to advance itself. Nineties woman realises her finan- cial interests are best served by, metaphor- ically speaking, getting into bed with the men's game and playing in joint tourna- ments. In the Seventies the general view amongst the sisterhood was that their sport was dwarfed by the men in events where they played together. Hence the separation of the women from the men at events such as the Italian, German and Japanese Opens.
The confrontational rhetoric, images and slogans are now gone. Where once representations of assertive women were employed to sell the sport with slogans like, 'You've come a long way, baby', now subtler and more feminine images are used. Until recently even heavy dosages of Viagra wouldn't have made 90 per cent of women tennis players attractive to 80-year- old men in Lycra shorts. But things have changed for the better. A pouting Martina Hingis recently appeared on the front cover of GQ magazine and the very sexy Anna Kournikova appeared in Rolling Stone in a suggestive pose. This is exactly what is needed to restore popularity. And with men's tennis lacking personalities, the women are in a position to cash in on their good fortune.
The sisterhood has finally realised that it has been damaged commercially by a lack of femininity and by associations with les- bianism. Whilst Martina Navratilova's openness is to be commended for scorning the hypocrisy of those lesbians who take Commercial advantage of living a lie whilst very firmly remaining in the closet, it has nevertheless harmed women's tennis from a financial perspective. For example, no cosmetics companies (natural sponsors for the women's game) are associated with women's tennis. Today's feminists realise that they have to sacrifice principle for pragmatism and avoid political statements about sexuality, because femininity (or sex- uality if you like) is the major selling-point of the sport. Andrea Dworkin look-alikes have been pushed aside away from the public gaze, lest they be seen or heard. It is a pity that Fay Weldon's serial Big Women wasn't based on three decades of life on the women's tennis tour and rather than on a feminist publishing house. There would have been more source material on which to draw. She would have had a field day rationalising the typical female tennis player's dependence on her male coach some of whom abuse their pupils sexually. There is at present an. inquiry into the alleged abuse of under-age girls by one such coach. Legal proceedings may follow. But, amidst all the hype, militancy, back- biting, arm-twisting and deceit, it is refreshing to see that our own Samantha Smith appears to be unspoilt, natural and the girl next door.
The author is a former British No. 1 and 14th world-ranked tennis player.
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