The new and
well-reviewed film Battle of the Sexes, a dramatization of the celebrated 1973 singles match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King (who won in three straight sets) at the Houston Astrodome has focused attention on direct athletic competition between women and men. So did John McEnroe’s assertion that Serena Williams would be “like number 700 in the world” if she played the ATP tour.
The dust kicked up raises interesting questions about sport and gender. It can also obscure the fact that there’s a great deal of parity in men’s and women’s tennis. Actually, throughout most of the human lifespan, boys and girls, and men and women, can play competitive, well-matched singles. There’s only one span of years—roughly between ages 16 and 32—in which the size, strength, speed, and athleticism of top male athletes puts them in a different category from the best women, like Serena Williams.
Mentoring can be simply competing well with a younger player. Read more.
Much of this is raw biology and genetics. No one imagines that the WNBA all-star team could compete successfully with any NBA team or even men’s college squads. How might an all-women’s team fare in the NFL? Are any women sprinters about to nip Usain Bolt in the 100 meters? These are non-controversial questions. So why the brouhaha over tennis?
“Who needs the comparison of the sexes?” asks Harvard men’s tennis coach Dave Fish. “In 1973, men and women never competed in anything. It’s a whole new world now. Men and women compete in many fields. Tennis is one of them. We’ve seen the quality of athleticism in both genders surpass anything we thought possible. We should celebrate that!”
Bear in mind that the gender gap in athleticism shows up only at the highest levels of performance—namely, college and professional sports. However, about 99 percent of media coverage focuses on these rarefied zones of skill, magnifying the perceived gap between the genders.
“Who needs the comparison of the sexes?”
Yet the vast majority of tennis players don’t play professionally or compete for a college varsity. For them, individual differences in skill explain far more than biological gifts. In any tennis club, mixed-doubles matches often reconfigure for a second set of “girls versus the boys” with no loss of competitiveness. Recreational and competitive play in preadolescence and in middle or older years shows a great deal of gender parity.
“I grew up in Miami going to the country club, playing a lot with the boys,” says Ronni Bernstein, head women’s tennis coach at the University of Michigan. “We stayed local. Everybody played together. We should get back to that model, where age and gender don’t matter. Getting people at the same skill level on the court is what counts. A 14 year-old girl can play a 30 year-old man; a 70-year-old man can play a 30 year-old woman. Get tennis back to being very social, and have the courts full again.”
UTR- What is it?
Indeed, the crucial factor is simply putting players of comparable skill on the court together for
level-based play. The easiest and most reliable way to do this is via Universal Tennis Ratings (UTR). UTR uses a single scale for both male and female players that embraces athletes of any age. It’s a common yardstick that makes it easy to mix the genders in singles or doubles tennis for close, enjoyable matches. Consider the recent UTR-driven tournament in England in which an 11-year-old girl edged out a crafty 72-year-old man in a tiebreaker, after splitting two sets.
“We are trying to create more chances to compete locally,” says Fish. “When you integrate genders as well as ages, everybody wins. Suddenly, there are twice as many people you can play with.” (The situation parallels Woody Allen’s joke about the advantage of bisexuality: “It doubles your chance of getting a date on Saturday night.”)
“It doubles your chance of getting a date on Saturday night.”
In a tournament, UTR makes it easy to place all male and female entrants in a staggered-entry draw, grouped with others of their own ability. They might then advance and play others at a higher level. For the women, “It doesn’t matter how you stack up against the men,” Fish explains. “You can have an affordable competitive experience that’s also a growth experience—a healthy competitive challenge.”
“UTR can do a lot,” Bernstein says. “For example, you can use it to keep former college players who don’t go the pro route in the game. We lose a lot of tennis players because there’s no easy way for them to get good competition.”
Mixing genders can also help women strengthen their games. Women pros are developing in all parts of the world at a rate above that of their male peers. One reason is that the women can always find male practice partners to stretch their games, whereas for the professional men, such partners are spread out more thinly—and the higher you are on the “food chain,” the more costly your travel becomes.
“We lose a lot of tennis players because there’s no easy way for them to get good competition.”
Outside the WTA, prize money events for women players are scarce; it’s hard to bring together a critical mass for a money tournament. But open, gender-neutral events like the
UTR Boston Open or the UTR National Open Clay Court Championships set aside a bonus pool of prize money for the women, in addition to the regular pool that’s open to everyone.
One powerful option is a truly gender-neutral event organized around level-based play. This works if the tourney caps UTRs at a certain level. It might, for example, restrict entries to men and women with UTRs from 9.00 to 11.00, and then select its draw without regard to sex. “That would create a very interesting event,” says Fish. Men and women would just play singles with others of similar ability, and “may the best man—or woman—win.”
This kind of level-based event might become a new competitive bandwidth for aspiring female pros, perhaps a gateway to the ITF Pro Circuit. It would not only help the athletes develop their games via well-matched opponents, but could improve the social atmosphere of the tournament. Traveling around as a young woman professional
can be a lonely experience. At a gender-neutral UTR-driven event, the men and women could meet each other and form friendships or find practice partners in a social setting once the day’s play is over. “It’s like a 10K race,” Fish explains. “People spread out along the course while they are running, but everyone finishes at the same place. There, you can have a conversation over a beverage.”
UTR Boston Open: Level-based play rides again
Level-based events can also keep youngsters in the game. “We could fill the draws much better by dropping age and sex barriers, and instead group people by skill level with UTR,” Bernstein says. “There just aren’t enough young girls competing in tennis to fill a draw limited to girls of a certain age. My daughter is 11 years old, and she could play with 8-year-old or 13-year-old girls and boys. We need events that embrace that. She has now switched to volleyball.”
Erasing age and sex barriers can also make events more interesting thanks to the refreshing quality of new blood. Many coaches feel that their promising women athletes often give up competing because they get so tired of playing the same people over and over—it’s just not that much fun. In a co-ed event with players of different ages, it all suddenly becomes a lot more stimulating.
Enrich the social and developmental aspects of your game with UTR. Attend or host a UTR event. Contact us here.
