Washington tennis tournament offers equal status for women and men but unequal prize money

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Spectators at the DC Open tennis tournament walk outside the main stadium in Washington on Monday, July 31, 2023, the first day of the main-draw competition. The tournament is the first joint ATP-WTA 500 event but the womens champion will earn about a third of what the mens champion will be paid. (AP Photo/Howard Fendrich)

WASHINGTON ā€“ A poster hanging at the DC Open site shows Frances Tiafoe ā€” a competitor in the field from nearby Maryland ā€” flanked by other men such as Andy Murray and Taylor Fritz and women such as Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula.

It is a simple visualization of a complicated change to a tournament that began Monday and has been around for men since 1969, added women via a simultaneous but lower-tier and less-promoted event in 2009 and now is taking a further step by touting itself as the first combined ATP-WTA 500 event. That is two levels below Grand Slams and one level below Masters 1000s and was accomplished by elevating the womenā€™s portion through the lease of what had been a hard-court tourney in San Jose, California, played during the same week.

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While ostensibly that puts the men and women on equal footing in Washington ā€” where players both will be trying to win a trophy and to prepare for the U.S. Open, the year's last Grand Slam tournament ā€” it still is not equal all the way around.

Most notably: The menā€™s champion receives a check for $353,445; the womenā€™s champion earns $120,150. That is not an anomaly. There are other stops on the professional tennis tours that include female and male players but do not pay them evenly.

ā€œOur main goal is to work toward equal prize money. That is what we want on the WTA side and what we think is fair. Especially at the combined events, we donā€™t want to see a discrepancy there. We want to see that weā€™re earning the same at the same event,ā€ said Pegula, an American who is No. 3 in the rankings and seeded No. 1 in Washington and a member of the women's tour's player council. ā€œThe fans are coming to watch both of us, and we should be making the same.ā€

All four Grand Slam tournaments offer equal prize money across the board, something the U.S. Open started doing 50 years ago and others as recently as 2007. That won't happen at the DC Open until 2027 as part of a wider plan the WTA recently announced to get equal paychecks at certain events by that year and at others by 2033.

ā€œThat will give everyone a chance to hopefully get revenues to grow to be able to afford it,ā€ said Mark Ein, who has been the tournament chairman since 2019 and is part of the group that recently bought the NFLā€™s Washington Commanders from Dan Snyder.

ā€œWhen we took over the tournament, one of my top goals was to secure a womenā€™s event at an equal level as our menā€™s,ā€ Ein said. ā€œOne of the things I love about tennis is itā€™s really the only sport where athletes of both genders compete on the same playing surface at the same time.ā€

There are other discrepancies between the menā€™s and womenā€™s brackets in Washington.

The menā€™s field is 48 players; the womenā€™s is 28. The rankings points available are nearly the same, but the menā€™s champion gets 500, the womenā€™s 470.

Like Pegula, three-time major champion Murray, who is seeded 15th in Washington, said that all players ā€œat the same event, on the same courts,ā€ should be vying for the same payouts.

ā€œBut I think for it ever to become like truly equal, the WTA and the ATP are actually going to have to come together and work as one before thatā€™s the case, because I donā€™t think itā€™s that straightforward just now that both tours have different sponsors, different TV deals and all of that stuff, too,ā€ Murray said. ā€œThere is a few things that still need to change, but I feel like things are going in the right direction, like with the move to this event becoming a 500 for both. Can obviously still get better.ā€

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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports


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