Serena Williams and her sister Venus deserve more respect

[special700]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/williamssisters/11372906/Serena-Williams-and-her-sister-Venus-deserve-more-respect-and-we-should-cherish-them-while-we-can.html

Serena Williams and her sister Venus deserve more respect and we should cherish them while we can.

The Williams sisters are both in the Australian Open quarter-finals and are tennis greats, yet while their contemporary Roger Federer is fawned over, the sisters' achievements are met with relative indifference

By Charlie Eccleshare

At the Australian Open on Wednesday, Venus and Serena Williams will play quarter-final matches aged 34 and 33 respectively. For a sport as unforgiving on the body as tennis, getting to the last eight of a grand slam at that age is a commendable achievement. The achievement is even more remarkable given that Serena is still the No 1 ranked player in the world so getting to this stage is simply business as usual, while Venus has had to deal with the auto-immune disease Sjögren’s syndrome as she has fought back to the upper echelons of the game.
But in spite of this, their achievements continue to be met largely with indifference. And it’s an indifference that is so strikingly at odds with the seemingly endless praise lavished on Roger Federer, who is just one month older than Serena and as such a useful comparison.

Firstly, when comparing the two, it may surprise many to learn that Serena has won more grand slam singles titles than the Swiss superstar, not to mention a stack of doubles titles as well. In any case, the tributes to the grace and brilliance of Federer that continue to be written, compared with the relative silence on Serena would suggest that it is the former who has continued to dominate as sporting old age tightens its grip.

Only he hasn’t; whereas she has.

Federer has not won a grand slam since Wimbledon 2012. Williams by contrast has won four since then (as well as Wimbledon 2012), which incidentally is three more than any other female player during this period.


[Edited to fix link.]

 

[kskate2]

You have to remember what time and sport we're living in. Federer gets alot of praise because he is a man. Men's tennis still draws way more attention and fans than the women. Is it right? Of course not. But that's the world we live in today.

You can look at this forum for starters and see the amount of users who join and only post in the ATP forum. There are some who will post in the ATP forum, other sports threads, off-topic threads, etc, but never come to the women's forum. That's how it is and I don't know that anything can be done to change that. There will always be some users who like what they like and that's that.

As someone who's been watching this sport over 40 years, IMO, it would help the WTA to address some of these glaring issues that I believe are holding the women's game back from garnering the kind of attention and viewers it could be getting:

1. Get rid of on-court coaching. It's not eligible for the men. So why have it if we're going to pay equal prize money to both. We should keep the rules as close as possible. Besides, there's no added value or benefit for it anyway.

2. Eliminate the excessive grunting for the die-hard fans and the general public.

3. Get more top players involved in the doubles. Be it mixed or women's doubles. This will bring more exposure and viewers to women's tennis if you could get the top women to play.

4. Enforce the rules, no matter who is playing or what the rule is. There are some purists in the sport who want to see the rules enforced. Meaning, crack down on the players who take too much time, illegal coaching, racquet abuse, foul language, MTO's, bathroom breaks, etc.

 

[MargaretMcAleer]

I would also like to say,both sisters will probably get the respect that is due to them when they retire,sad to say,though I have seen that with other players,not in the calibre of the Williams sisters.

 

[Federberg]

I'm not sure why a comparison needs to be made with Federer. It's pointless and unnecessary. He deserves his praise. They deserve theirs too, one doesn't detract from the other

Apart from that the article is correct of course. The lack of appreciation of the Williams sisters is so glaring, it's actually uncomfortable to acknowledge. I'm sad to suggest it, but race probably has something to do with it. I applaud the fact they are unapologetic about who they are. Frankly if sports fans can't accept them it says more about the fans (or media) than it does them.

Here we have two sisters, who have come from no where, in to a sport and they've both been the best at their sport. I struggle to think of comparisons that even approach this. The Manning brothers? Perhaps...

I was going to mention the De Boer brothers for Dutch football, but it's not adequate. It would be like Messi and Ronaldo being siblings. That's how ridiculous the Williams sisters have been. One in a billion. History will be kinder to them

 

[sk310]

This has a lot less to do with Serena and Venus being black than it does to do with them being women. Just look at how much less women sports stars are paid vs male sports stars. The situation has improved vastly even from 20 year ago... A lot of that change is due to these two women, especially Venus fighting for equal pay.

 

[sk310]

You have to remember what time and sport we're living in. Federer gets alot of praise because he is a man. Men's tennis still draws way more attention and fans than the women. Is it right? Of course not. But that's the world we live in today.

You can look at this forum for starters and see the amount of users who join and only post in the ATP forum. There are some who will post in the ATP forum, other sports threads, off-topic threads, etc, but never come to the women's forum. That's how it is and I don't know that anything can be done to change that. There will always be some users who like what they like and that's that.

As someone who's been watching this sport over 40 years, IMO, it would help the WTA to address some of these glaring issues that I believe are holding the women's game back from garnering the kind of attention and viewers it could be getting:

1. Get rid of on-court coaching. It's not eligible for the men. So why have it if we're going to pay equal prize money to both. We should keep the rules as close as possible. Besides, there's no added value or benefit for it anyway.

2. Eliminate the excessive grunting for the die-hard fans and the general public.

3. Get more top players involved in the doubles. Be it mixed or women's doubles. This will bring more exposure and viewers to women's tennis if you could get the top women to play.

4. Enforce the rules, no matter who is playing or what the rule is. There are some purists in the sport who want to see the rules enforced. Meaning, crack down on the players who take too much time, illegal coaching, racquet abuse, foul language, MTO's, bathroom breaks, etc.

I agree the WTA can do a lot, but I think almost none of these matter to a casual fan. On court coaching is an insider issue that a casual tennis fan wouldn't know was unusual.

Grunting sure its annoying when it's excessive but I think its blown out of proportion.

Doubles? Seriously? Because the Bryan Brothers are such huge sports stars?

Rules sure that matters but if a casual tennis fan tunes in 4 times a year I promise you they BARELY know tennis rules.

The main thing that will change this is marketing. As much as most people on this forum, me included, dislike Maria Sharapova it's people like her and Serena that will change this game. Individual player sports don't become huge because of rules and regulations they become big because of big personalities and big marketable stars. Women's gymnastics is far more popular then men's because in 1976 a tiny little girl named Nadia won people's hearts and then it happened again in 1984 with Mary Lou Retton and again with Dominique Moceanu. That model is easy to repeat. I wish Li Na and Maria Sharapova had both been more consistent because I see them as having the possibility to move the sports forward so much in marketing terms. Maria because, lets face it, she is tall pretty and blonde. Li Na because she is marketable to the biggest new market of tennis fans in almost a century. But both those players didn't have the consistency to become stars at the level of Nadal or Federer.

Venus and Serena did SO much to increase the equity of women's sports stars in tennis and beyond. Now the model needs to be repeated with another star who shows consistency in their game so that marketing firms can market them over the course of their career and connect fans for the long haul. Fans of a player won't continue to follow that player if after a few years the player starts losing everything.