Wimbledon: Equal Pay with Equal Play is Fairer

I start with unreserved congratulations to Venus Williams and Roger Federer who are this year's women's and men's tournament winners of the tennis grand slam tournament held in Wimbledon. It is not appropriate to compare their paths to the championship that each deserves richly. Also different is the manner in which each closed the final match because Venus Williams quickly gained momentum and overcome her opponent in two sets while the men's final match was far more competitive and required as much perspiration as inspiration over five sets.

However, this year's tournament was the first during which the respective champions took away equal prize money. In this blogger's view, that was patently unjust to the men's champion and his opponents. The prize money was about US$ 1.4 million for each of the winners of the singles tournaments. Now, I fail to see the claim of equal treatment because without doubt, we all can count that the men's match was decided over five sets while the ladies match ended after Venus won in two straight sets.

Indeed, there's already the very reasonable and altogether just argument that the Women's game ought to be decided by the best of five sets in every round too. Neil Harmann of The Times reports on the finals and traces the logic for this argument here. Now that would be equal pay for equal work! Awful Announcing makes a similar argument.