Guest post from Senior Tennis Correspondent Wendy M. Grossman!
At least once a year, some male in tennis voices a disparaging opinion of the women’s tour in general or the female players in specific. Usually, that male is a player or former player, and survives the experience because he’s a current or former star athlete. The sport’s promoters and organizers typically manage to be more restrained.
Not this year.
Not Nadal’s fault Moore name-checked him.
At a traditional finals day media breakfast, Raymond Moore, the director of the BNP Paribas tournament in Indian Wells, which features both men and women and has been owned since 2009 by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, opened up. “In my next life when I come back I want to be someone in the WTA, because they ride on the coattails of the men. They don’t make any decisions and they are lucky. They are very, very lucky. If I was a lady player, I’d go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they have carried this sport. They really have.”
Ana Ivanovic. Dithering.
Within hours, after a barrage of shocked criticism from everyone from current players Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka, two of the day’s finalists, legendary player Martina Navratilova, and tour founder Billie Jean King to men’s tennis head Chris Kermode, he was forced to apologize, and he issued a statement:
“At my morning breakfast with the media, I made comments about the WTA that were in extremely poor taste and erroneous. I’m truly sorry for those remarks, and apologize to all the players and WTA as a whole. We had a women’s final today that reflects the strength of the players, especially Serena and Victoria and the entire WTA. Again, I am truly sorry for my remarks.”
SorryWatch has dissected many apologies by now. This one is short and explicit, and avoids “if”. I’m not expert enough to dissect it beyond that, though I’ll note that the “lucky” comment in particular deserves its own full-length apology; pioneers like Billie Jean King gave decades of their lives to create the success of the women’s tour for the precise reason that the women were treated as a sideshow at men’s tournaments and paid perhaps one-tenth the prize money.
Maria Sharapova. Waffling.
The problem here is that Moore runs – and is the co-founder of – one of the biggest, richest, and most important tournaments in the annual calendar; it comes right below the top layer (the four Grand Slams – Wimbledon and the Australian, French, and US Opens). Every year, he makes key decisions about which players will appear on which courts at what time; he determines how the players are treated and what TV coverage they get. In 2009, his tournament became a required event on the women’s tour; that is, anyone whose ranking qualifies them for the main draw cannot skip the event without forfeiting ranking points and paying a fine. The upshot is that his decisions and statements have real impact on the players’ careers. So, sure, he apologized. But does that change what he clearly really thinks or the decisions he will make in the future?
An apology in this case would not have looked like this statement. It would have looked, instead, exactly like a letter offering resignation. The next day, March 22, Larry Ellison announced Moore had stepped down.
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SorryWatch adds: Moore’s apology isn’t any good. He doesn’t walk back his bizarre assertions. “Erroneous” doesn’t begin to cover the inaccuracy of the view he put forth.
Serena Williams. Irresolute.
On the other hand, although “extremely poor taste” merely hints at the creepy fingerings of his horndog misogyny, did we really want him to say more about his thoughts about ladies on their knees at bedtime? No, no, no need to say no more. Please say no more.
SorryWatch notes that saying someone is lucky they don’t have to make decisions is the standard insult-to-injury way of saying they don’t have the freedom to make decisions. Those lucky ladies! It’s like the old notion of carefree slaves, or the idea that prisoners have cushy lives without responsibility. Three hots and a cot and you never have to prioritize!
Moore need not await reincarnation. Caitlyn Jenner, another pioneer in athletics, has opened a path for him to achieve his wish. With luck, and enough talent and gumption, Moore surely can succeed in becoming a pampered coattail-rider in the ladies’ tennis circuit.
*snort*
Well, there’s that.
Wait, hold on, could you please be clearer about what you are suggesting here? I’m not sure quite what you are implying. Or, rather, I fear what you’re saying is that Caitlyn Jenner specifically chose to transition for competitive athletic reasons, which surely you don’t really mean?
No, the implication was that Moore could transition for competitive athletic reasons. Snark.
In this, as in so much else, tennis has already been a pioneer. In about 1979s, the ophthalmologist Richard Raskind, having undergone surgery and emerged as Renee Richards, and being a keen tennis player, sought to compete on the women’s tour. The WITA (as I believe it then was) declined to give permission and there was a court case, which Richards won. Richards competed in several tournaments, wrote a book, and acted as one of Martina Navratilova’s coaches during some of her most successful years.
Pam Shriver’s 1986 autobiography, a diary-style account of the year 1985 on the women’s tour, notes that she actually played Richards, and described her standard of play as that of an “average male club player”. Looking up Richards’ career on the pro tour (http://www.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/player/profile.aspx?playerid=20003755) I see that she actually played quite a few matches, going 34:64 (wins:losses) overall. A quick glance suggests she never beat anyone of significance.
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PS: After that, the women’s tour added a requirement for a buccal smear to prove chromosomal qualification to the rules and regulations, but they’d have had to anyway since they were negotiating to get tennis back into the Olympics, where it was already a requirement.
wg