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Connors v. Federer; equal prize moneyWTA Roadmap changes again!; Linetskaya back
It was a very tough call today as to what to lead with: Tommy Haas' nonsensical reaction to the Wimbledon's decision to offer equal prize money, or Jimmy Connors' non-reaction to Roger Federer's breaking of his consecutive weeks at No. 1 streak on Monday (with 161 weeks). Let's go with Connors, who according to his agent when told about it has this reaction: "Jimmy thought Pete [Sampras] broke it!" So much for the impact of that story. According to author and Connors' expert Joel Drucker, Jimmy never thought much of that streak anyway when it compared to his number of titles, performance at the Slams, etc. But Roger is very proud and rightly so. So here's Haas on his disappointment with Wimbledon's decision: "I think the depth of men's tennis is much tougher than the women's, plus we play best of five sets. … Not to say that the women don't deserve it. The top players train very hard and are very good tennis players but in general I don't agree with it." Nice contradiction, T-Haas. No, the depth is no longer better. As Brad Gilbert said last week, while that may have been the case pre-Federer, it's not any more. In fact, at the top level of the game, the women's depth is way better. It's not is beyond the Top 20, but fans pay to see the stars and even on her worst hair day, Serena brings in five times the amount of fans that Haas does at Wimby. The entertainment factor is what should determine prize money, not length of play. If it did, why do lazy middle managers make twice what hard-working day laborers do? Accosting to Reuters, the FFT will debate whether it should equalize all prize money for the men and women at '07 Roland Garros in a mid-March meeting. The finalists already get the same prize money. Consider that one all but done. Yes, the women of the world can thank Sony Ericsson WTA CEO Larry Scott for fighting hard on the equal prize money issue, but please give major, major props to two players who have consistently stuck their neck out on the issue: Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova, neither of whom need the prize money due to their substantial off-court earnings. © TennisReporters.net 2007
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