Ellie–thanks for your comment. All of my cycling friends are in the hate-Lance crowd, in large part for the reasons you discuss. But, as someone who doesn’t really follow sports at all, I have to say that I find it hard to blame the Williams sisters or Armstrong for wanting to extend their careers and protect their “brand.” The rewards of “the love of the sport” aren’t nearly as great as being who they are!

There’s an interesting institutional dynamic here as well. Both the men’s and women’s tours have unions that have pretty consistently complained about the length of the season, the fact that players have so much pressure on them to show up to every minor tournament everywhere to keep their rankings up, etc. In essence, the things unions usually complain about: the rules of the workplace and things that impact worker safety.

The difference, though, is that the men’s tennis union seems pretty consistently stronger than the women’s union. The men have been somewhat successful at changing the calendar and the ranking system so that there isn’t the pressure to play every week. The women’s union, on the other hand, has had less success in this respect, and relatively minor tournaments carry a greater relative weight. (To be very arcane, the Women’s tour thinks that the Pilot Pen tournament in New Haven–not a big deal tournament-is half as important as the Grand Slam US Open, while the men’s tour thinks it’s about 30% as important, at least when figuring out the rankings. Yes, I did just look that up.) Sponsors insist that leading women show up at every event–Pilot wants Venus Williams to come to New Haven every August–and the women’s association obliges. This is part of what lends the women’s ranking system a shambolic character. The quantity versus quality ratio of tournament wins is way out of whack in comparison to the men’s game.

Of course, the women’s union has had less success in other areas as well, most notably the difficult struggle to achieve equal pay at many of the major tournaments. The interesting counterfactual would be: what if the women’s union were as strong as the men’s? How would things be different?

I know my posts on this thread keep coming back to some of the same kinds of issues. I can get obsessed with the business/institutional end of sports. But in this case as in many others, I think that the (relative) weakness of institutional support for women pros does influence public perception in sometimes unseen ways.

I know the comparison may strike many as strange, given the amounts of money the Williamses have earned in their careers and the level at which they compete. But, I suppose a pissed-off public could stop showing up to their matches, could stop supporting the products they endorse, etc., if they were really angry about it. And yet–the appetite for the Williams sisters is still apparently limitless. (I have to say, I don’t follow them they way you do, but I’ve admired what I’ve see of their business savvy.)

Feminist Avatar asks, “What happened to being complex individuals with different identities and roles that informed each other?” But–we’re talking about WOMEN, FA, not “individuals” or “people.” All women are exactly alike and need exactly the same thing! What is this “individual” of whom you speak?

What happened to being complex individuals with different identities and roles that informed each other?

Both Serena and Venus play fewer tournaments than the other top female players, which makes perfect sense if you’re in your late 20s and don’t want to get hurt. And how do many fans and pundits respond? You hear complaints about how they aren’t trying hard enough; they disrespect the game by not showing up every week and only putting in effort during the big tournaments. (And there they mostly rely on “natural ability.” It’s almost as if they’re lazy!) Serena especially gets accused of thinking she’s “above the sport” and thinks too much of herself. She’s got a “bad attitude.”

All of these are charges that have been levied against black athletes, male and female, for years. To be reductionist, I think that in some ways the public treats the Williamses as black instead of female. (Telling in and of itself.) And these critiques are deeply related to their efforts to manage their careers and avoid injuries and burnout so that they can play longer as “women” and not as “girls.” (I do not want to know what the coverage would be like if one of them became an unmarried mom, however. Many heads would explode.)

OK–Enough tennis talk for me! Back to work!

Fascinating comments about the isolation of the women v. the men. (Yes, thefrogprincess–this is sounding all too familiar!)

John S. makes interesting points about the class and race angles here re: education (or lack thereof). It’s this kind of singlemindedness (being pulled out of school at 14, living in a world of only trainers and stage-parents) of people who aspire to win Grand Slam matches that I was getting at when I expressed skepticism of the media’s angle that Clijsters was a come-from-outta-nowhere victory and that she’s been spending all of her time with her baby rather than on the court. So much of the work that goes into this level of athletic achievement is masked–intentionally it seems, by the sports press and the sports and players themselves. (And I think this may be a gender-netural thing.) Why? Is it because the fans like to think there is such a thing as a “natural,” rather than a highly cultivated talent?

We take for granted that to get to the top of most professions and the arts, it takes years of training, work, and a singleminded focus on one’s metier. Why do we still need to believe in the Cinderella Story in sports?

And to historiann’s point about the game being a game for women again and not just girls: I think there’s something to that, especially once you move beyond the top 10. There are a lot of players whose names might not be recognizable to people who have more of a life than I do but who are in their late 20s, early 30s. Ai Sugiyama, for example, is retiring this year at 34. And Venus is nearing 30.