What’s Common between the Tennis Scoring System and Women’s Tennis? ... They Both Take the French a Bit Too Seriously.
Ever wondered why they start off a tennis match with the score of “love all”? Or, for that matter, why they call a “zero”, “love”, to begin with? Even if you
have wondered, and even if you have made the effort to discover the answer and EVEN if you
know that it has its roots in some obscure French scoring system, I would insist otherwise. Yeah. For, I insist it has its roots not in a scoring system, but something else that is also distinctively French – their love of loving and loveliness.
But I do insist that one thing has taken the tennis scoring system increasingly seriously over the past few years and that is women’s tennis. Women’s tennis is going all…French. That is not to say that it has come under the influence of the French as a
nationality, nor does it sadly mean that women tennis players have begun to do exceptionally well at the French Open. That is just to say that women’s tennis has become obsessed with one thing that the French love more than anybody else – fashion. Like I said;
love of loving and loveliness.
Women’s tennis has always been associated with fashion. Era by era, some of the most prolific fashion designers of the respective times have designed tennis clothing for women – from the corset to the skirt, they’ve designed it all. However, as some people
mistakenly believe it to be, fashion in women’s tennis is NOT about the journey from the frocks and corsets to the skirts and tank tops. The question is: while on the tennis court, do you look like you’ve come to play tennis or like you’ve lost your way to
a drink-and-dance party? In simpler terms – how much flash is digestible?
To set some things clear – yes, I know, the flash has always been there. And yes I know, has always been a part of both men’s and women’s tennis. But along with the turn of the millennium, women’s tennis, for some reason, took a wild turn for the flashiest,
too. While up until the 1990s there used to be one or two women on the entire WTA circuit who wore “decorative” clothing – most notably one Anna Kournikova, the golden girl of women’s tennis in the 1990s, and the Williams sisters – the post-2000 era has seen
the majority of WTA circuit focus on bling. From an average tennis player to the best, there’s hardly a woman on the court who sports that baggy, collared T-shirt and that straight-forward skirt that adorned the bodies of the likes of Martina Navratilova and
Steffi Graff. So what is it that has seen the women’s dressing gone wild in recent years? And what – most notably and most objectionably – has reduced, to some, the tennis court to a mere modeling ramp? I’d tell you what. It is the money.
One major change that has taken place in the last decade in the world of tennis is the increase in women’s prize money so that it is now no less than equal to that of the men,
even in the Grand Slams, despite the best-of-five and best-of-three sets difference. And despite also the fact that tennis is now much more about power and much less about finesse – a development that doesn’t really suit the more delicate gender. So,
if two plus two really equals four, women’s tennis should lose its appeal in the power tennis era, for men’s tennis is the obviously better alternative on that front
if people watch it just for the sake of the sport. BUT, as we all know, women’s tennis has actually
gained appeal in the past few years.
The thesis is simple – the gloss and the dangly earrings and the pretty dresses and laced frocks are just there to keep the public interested - To keep the appeal there. Because, as much as the feminists might object, the difference between the men’s game
and the women’s game is HUGE. In a frequently quoted example, Karsten Braasch, a German tennis player, beat both the Williams sisters – the strongest women on the tour, no question about that – 6-1 and 6-2, Serena and Venus respectively, on a single afternoon
in 1998, while ranked 203 in the world on the men’s circuit. And it’s not like the women don’t admit it. “Men's and women's tennis are completely opposite. It really is comparing apples to oranges. Men are just stronger than ladies,” says Serena Williams.
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