After years of pressure from the WTA and various others besides, the All England Club today finally relented and introduced equal pay for male and female contestants at Wimbledon. Speaking at a press conference this morning, chairman Tim Phillips declared "the time is right to bring this subject to a logical conclusion and eliminate the difference", stating that the decision would be "good for tennis, good for women players and good for Wimbledon".
With both the US and Australian Opens having brought in equality some years ago, and even the French Open offering matching cheques to both singles champions last year, few pundits expected anything less. When even culture secretary Tessa Jowell threw her weight behind the women's cause, Phillips - previously unmovable on the issue - knew anything short of parity would prompt a very public backlash.
But is equality at Wimbledon really that fair? In the past, Phillips and his predecessors have regularly cited various club polls that suggest fans enjoy the men's game more, but surely the crucial point is this: at five sets apiece rather than three, men's matches are quite simply longer. Perhaps the real question should be whether today's announcement even represents equality.
Last year, for instance, Roger Federer had to play 202 games on his way to taking the title, whereas Amélie Mauresmo took the women's crown in just 142 yet she was paid only 5% less than Federer (£625,000 to his £655,000). That's equivalent to £4,401 per game instead of £3,094 per game, and the disparity might have been greater if Federer had dropped more than a single set on his way to the title.
Nor is it a one-off trend - in justifying the prize money disparity after the 2005 tournament LTA chief executive Ian Ritchie pointed out that women who reached the last eight pocketed £1,432 per game against the mens' £993 per game.
A common counter-argument has been that women's games are longer, so three sets last a comparable time to five sets of men's tennis, but, while numbers aren't available for the average length of men's and women's matches at Wimbledon, there has certainly been no evidence of this in the tournament's finals. On average, women's finals since 1980 have lasted just over 93 and a half minutes, whereas the average men's final has lasted over 151 minutes. The longest men's final in the same period (Jimmy Connors's epic win over John McEnroe in 1982) lasted 254 minutes, while the longest women's final (Venus Williams's upset of Lindsey Davenport in 2005) lasted 165 minutes.
If we can accept these numbers as even vaguely indicative - and, admittedly, caution should be exercised using such a small pool of data - then shouldn't the men be paid more for playing over an hour more's tennis per match than their counterparts? Certainly there are few other professions where a person would be offered the same pay packet as a colleague who did the same job but worked longer hours.
If equality in pay was to be accompanied by a move to equality on the court - ie five-set tennis for women, too - anyone would be hard pressed to argue against it. To claim - especially in an era of such physical specimens as Mauresmo and the Williams sisters - that women could not play five-set matches is surely disingenuous; do female athletes not run marathons and play football over 90 minutes? It is noteworthy that many more of the top female players feel able take part in the doubles as well as the singles at Wimbledon than top men do.
As it is, today's decision smacks of political correctness for political correctness's sake, showing, above all, that tennis would rather accept an illogical compromise than risk being branded sexist by those who have failed to look beyond the surface of a so-called problem.
