Equal prize money opponents cherry-picking facts

All it took was a couple of lopsided women’s semifinals on Thursday at Wimbledon for the knives to come out.

Serena Williams’ 48-minute destruction of Elena Vesnina in the first of the semifinals – followed by Angelique Kerber’s straight-sets win over Venus Williams in the second – saw Twitter set ablaze with equal prize money naysayers.

Type “equal prize money” into Twitter and these were some of the top tweets:

Serena through to the final in 48 mins. What a joke! #Wimbledon #equalprizemoney

— Tom Gwynn (@tomgwynn1) July 7, 2016

….and that ladies and gentlemen, is why women's tennis is so poor, and why they shouldn't get equal prize money #Wimbledon

— David Slinger (@davidslinger) July 7, 2016

The men's quarters yesterday proved why equal prize money is a joke. 2 epic 5 set matches, never get anything like that in the womens

— Richie Hampshire (@RH_92) July 7, 2016

Whoever negotiated equal prize money for women at #Wimbledon should be set to negotiating world peace.

— Pat McDonald (@HwdBnd) July 7, 2016

Ah, to cherry pick results that support your argument. And on the surface, this argument looks pretty compelling. Federer v Cilic and Murray v Tsonga on Wednesday were Wimbledon Centre Court barnstormers, combining to deliver fans more than seven hours of incredible quarterfinal play.

Williams and Kerber dismissed their opponents in a collective total of two hours.

So, why don’t we hone in on a few more results?

Wimbledon began paying equal prize money in 2007. The last year they didn’t, in 2006, should have been among the reasons why they started doing so. The men’s semifinals that year – Roger Federer v Jonas Bjorkman and Rafael Nadal v Marcos Baghdatis – were brisk, straight-sets affairs. Federer dismissed Bjorkman 6-2 6-0 6-2.

No-one seemed to mind – fans heap praise on Federer and Nadal regardless of what transpires on court. Overlooked was the fact that a day earlier, the women’s semifinals were far more compelling. Amelie Mauresmo overcame Maria Sharapova in a three-set thriller after Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters had played out an absorbing, tight two-setter.

The star power of that women’s quartet and the high-quality nature of the matches made their semis that year a superior product. But nobody would have dreamed of insinuating they deserved more prize money than Federer and Nadal. Or even Bjorkman and Baghdatis, for that matter.

Nor did anyone suggest it six months later, when Federer destroyed Andy Roddick 6-4 6-0 6-2 in the Australian Open 2007 semifinals in a meagre 83 minutes. That was just 11 minutes longer than it took Kerber to dismiss Venus on Thursday, despite a whole extra set being thrown in.

Superlatives dripped from journalists’ copy following Federer’s performance. However, they were largely absent from the coverage of Serena’s win over Vesnina. Never mind Serena’s incredible stats – 11 aces, zero double faults, 28 winners, seven errors, and 96 per cent of first-serve points won. Instead, journalists in press forced both Williams and Vesnina to justify their claim to equal prize money.

Hardly respectful to a 21-time Grand Slam champion and world No.1 playing some of the best tennis of her life.

“Yeah, absolutely (we do),” Serena answered. “I mean, if you happen to write a short article, you think you don’t deserve equal pay as your beautiful colleague behind you?” Added Vesnina: “I think it’s not depends on the score. It’s just amazing that we have such a great champion like Serena on the women’s side.”

Tennis tweeter and podcaster Jonathan Newman wrote:

What's the exact score & match length for Serena to win that's acceptable for folks so as not to undermine her greatness & demean WTA tour?

— Jonathan Newman (@SportScribeCA) July 7, 2016

Maybe she just needed to play another dominant set against Vesnina to extend the match into the one hour, 15 minute ballpark. That would have put it only 14 minutes shy of Novak Djokovic’s 6-2 6-2 6-1 thrashing of David Ferrer in the Australian Open 2013 semifinals.

Vesnina was unseeded and ranked 50th when she faced Serena. In January 2013 when he faced Djokovic, Ferrer was the world No.5. Earlier that day in Melbourne in the women’s semfinals, Li Na defeated Maria Sharapova in straight sets before Victoria Azarenka did the same to Sloane Stephens. Both of those matches – won in two sets – lasted longer than Djokovic’s win over Ferrer, which required three sets.

Yet no-one suggested Djokovic and Ferrer deserved less than them. Nor that the women should have been remunerated accordingly for offering fans more than double the length of semifinal entertainment than what Djokovic and Ferrer managed, given that match was a single-session ticketed equivalent of the back-to-back women’s semis.

How could a top player capitulate like Ferrer did against Djokovic? Nobody really seemed to ask that question – they were too focused on Djokovic’s deadly ferocity. Instead, they asked it of top seed Dinara Safina when she lost to Venus Williams 6-1 6-0 in the 2009 Wimbledon semifinals. “A performance that must surely be unsurpassed for feebleness by a player of her class in a match of this stature,” wrote The Telegraph.

Who cared that she was facing on her worst surface a five-time Wimbledon champion – and the defending champion – who was then ranked No.3? The generally-accepted narrative was that Safina was a waste of space. “Fortunately … the Centre Court fans had already enjoyed the marathon of the first semi-final, so did not feel too badly short-changed by the travesty of a match which followed it,” The Telegraph continued.

It was a shot the media chose not to take when Rafael Nadal was blitzed by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the Australian Open semifinals of 2008.

Tsonga was no Venus Williams – back then he was an unseeded player ranked 38th. We could have asked what on earth Nadal was doing winning just seven games against an untested upstart. Or why Tsonga has failed to win a semifinal at a Grand Slam event in the ensuing eight years.

But nobody did, or has.

Instead, all it takes is two great men’s matches on a thrilling day at Centre Court, followed by two quick women’s results, to wind back the female sporting movement what feels like about 50 years.

So, equal prize money naysayers – do your thing. Cherry-pick lop-sided women’s results for your purpose. Ignore equivalent men’s results. Fail to acknowledge stellar women’s matches, such as Cibulkova v Radwanska in the fourth round at this year’s Wimbledon, followed onto court by Vesnina v Makarova, both of which concluded at 9-7 in the third set. Do what makes you happy.

At the end of the day, Kerber put it best.

“This is tough because you never know how the matches are before you came here. We are giving everything on court, everybody. It doesn’t matter if you win or if you lose, I mean, that’s sports,” she said.

‘You never know if it’s two hours or, at the end, eight hours.”

Let’s be done with this argument forever.