Sharapova Seeks Further Growth In The Women's Tennis Game
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Maria Sharapova spoke about the improvements that could be made to make women's tennis more popular.
In more recent years, there has been massive progress when it comes to the promotion and growth of the WTA Tour and plenty of top-ranked players are now truly capitalizing on all of the hard work and campaigning that the likes of Billie Jean King and her fellow pioneers undertook all those years ago.
Five-time Gram Slam champion Maria Sharapova, who announced her retirement from the sport in 2020, believes that there are plenty of improvements that have yet to be made in the game.
Her status more than puts her on the elite list of players throughout the years with her many high-profile successes in the sport; her voice is more than worth listening to, even though she refused talks about a possible comeback.
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With great steps taken when it comes to Grand Slam tennis, Sharapova is now hoping to see far more of a spotlight put on the main Tour to get fans far more engaged when it comes to the lesser-known tournaments that take place during the annual calendar.
In her mind, part of achieving this is simply just better public relations and a more targeted media campaign - pointing to the lack of real promotion for Coco Gauff's first event after her magnificent first US Open win the other month.
"You had Coco Gauff winning her first major at US Open in New York City. The crowd, the bridging culture, sport, fashion, all in that moment. Then three weeks later, how many people know she’s playing a tournament in Beijing?"
"She got to the semi-finals and lost, but I’m sure 99 percent of the audience at the US Open had no idea where she was playing next. Right away, that’s a problem off the bat. I really think Coco Gauff was the best thing that could have happened to women’s tennis. And I like the way in which way she won."
She also naturally spoke about the disparity that continues to exist when it comes to pay, but she knew that whilst steps could be taken to fix that, it would also need greater alignment between the associations and, of course, better promotion of other events in the calendar will bring in greater sponsorship and revenues which will help play its own part in a pay uplift.
"That’s not going to happen, not soon. Just this week, there is a men’s tournament still happening in Shanghai with the winners’ prize cheque at $ 1.2 million. At the same time, there is a women’s event in China, and the prize cheque is $120,000."
"At a Grand Slam, we are celebrating equal prize money. Great. Those are the biggest events, the biggest buzz. Then the rest of the Tour, which is the eight or nine other months, the disparity is insane. That needs to be addressed."
"You have so many entities. You have the ATP, the WTA, The ITF. Different ownership of tournaments. How do you align the calendar? How do you make it interesting and engaging? It will take time, but I sure hope they do it."
There will certainly be those who will listen to her thoughts and try to apply them in a practical way, but as she concedes, this will take time with the different voices that need to combine to make it happen, but as long as the sport is continually striving to improve, it is on the right track.
One change many tennis fans would love to see is parity on the five-sets front. Way too many intriguing battles sadly come to an end too quickly right now, and that change could only help on an engagement front.
