Serena Williams didn't even play today, but that didn't stop her from making news at Wimbledon. She became the latest women's player to speak out about Wimbledon's scheduling and how it seems to favor the men's players. On Monday, for example, there were two men's matches on both Centre Court and Court 1, while only one women's match was played on each. While there's an obvious inequity, I'm not sure anything was done intentionally. I'm also not sure there's any way to "do" anything about it.
Wimbledon, famously doesn't have night matches. They also only start play on the show courts at 1:00 each day, which means they can only schedule three matches on the two main courts. So, that's only six matches between the two main courts. Depending on the number of well-known top players that are scheduled that day, somebody's probably gonna be unhappy with their court assignment.
They try to move the biggest names to Court 1 at least once each during the early rounds (when there are more matches to worry about), but there's usually gonna be some pretty good matches involving marquee names on Court 2. I do kind of see Serena's point, though. Venus Williams, a five-time Wimbledon champion, played each of her first three matches on Court 2. And the only time she ended up on one of the show courts was when she played her top-ranked sister in the premier women's round of 16 matchup on Monday. It does seem a bit ridiculous that the player with more Wimbledon titles than anyone else in the draw besides her sister couldn't get on one of the top two courts for any of her first three matches.
I don't completely blame Wimbledon for the imbalance, though. The truth of the matter is that at the moment, there are more marquee names in the men's game. The only two top-draw women's players that you want to make sure end up on the show courts are Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. That's nothing against Caroline Wozniacki or Vika Azarenka or any of the other women's players, but Serena and Maria are the two biggest names women's tennis has at the moment. Meanwhile, on the men's side, you've got Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and even Stan Wawrinka has emerged as a marquee name recently.
And at Wimbledon, of course, Andy Murray is THE top draw. Other than the one match he plays on Court 1 each year (usually in the second round), every one of Murray's matches is on Centre Court. As it should be. That's the advantage of being the hometown favourite (it felt right to spell it the British way there). So, on the days Andy Murray plays, everybody knows there are only two opportunities to play on Centre Court. And with Murray on the same side of the draw as both Federer and Nadal this year, it made for a pretty easy decision to always have a second men's match on Murray days.
If this were the US Open, or even the Australian Open, the scheduling "issue" would be nonexistent. In fact, at the US Open the first match on Arthur Ashe Stadium generally doesn't involve the marquee names. Sometimes a doubles match is even first up. At the US Open, there are five matches on Ashe every day, so all of the big names will play most, if not all of their matches, on the main court. (Andy Roddick went something like six years without playing on a different court at the US Open one time.)
The US Open's marquee slot, of course, is the night session. As part of the new schedule this year, they've made the women's semifinals a Thursday night session, and they had the Saturday night women's final for like 10 years. At the Australian Open, they take it a step further. Both the men's and women's finals are played in prime time. I think the heat in Australia in January has something to do with that, but they love their night time final (which is conveniently at 3:30 a.m. in the U.S.), and I doubt that changes anytime soon.
Night sessions in the first week of the US Open are usually the best tickets to get. Because you know you're going to see a top men's player and a top women's player. It's rare that a player appears in multiple night sessions during the first week of the US Open, but it's not unheard of. (Except on Labor Day weekend, when CBS always arranged to have the biggest names during their coverage during the day. With the US Open moving exclusively to ESPN this year, it'll be interesting to see if that changes.)
Which brings us back to Wimbledon. They don't have night sessions and they do have Andy Murray. It's hard to spread the wealth among every player who might otherwise deserve the chance to play on Centre Court. Exacerbating the problem for the women's players this year was that the biggest names in the bottom half of the draw (the side that played on the same day as Murray) all lost early in the tournament. So, can you blame the Wimbledon organizers for wanting to put Roger Federer or another entertaining men's player like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on Centre Court over somebody like Aggie Radwanska? Sorry, but that's just the way it is.
On the other side of the women's bracket were Maria Sharapova and both Williams sisters. They played on the same day as Novak Djokovic. It should've been an easy call to go Serena, Maria and Novak on Centre Court each day, but you can't have the exact same schedule every time, so they had to mix it up and make the Court 1 schedule desirable, as well. The complaints came about because Grigor Dimitrov (who was a semifinalist last year, which is probably why he was there) got a Centre Court match while the women were shuffled off to Court 1. Again, I don't really see the issue with having last year's semifinalist (who's an extremely entertaining player) play on Centre Court, especially in what turned out to be a very good match. Same thing with Cilic-Isner.
Should the women's players have a reason to feel slighted? I can see where they think they do. But I don't think Wimbledon was making a conscious effort to favor the men. It's just the state of tennis right now. The biggest names in the sport are Serena Williams and a bunch of men. The Wimbledon organizers know that. They weren't picking the men to play on Centre Court because they were the men. They were picking the players they thought fans would most want to see. And there just happens to be more men's players people want to see at the moment.
Fortunately, this is no longer an issue. We've reached the semifinals, so all remaining singles matches will be played on Centre Court. But even when we get to this point, the schedule-makers still have work to do. Serena vs. Maria is the second match on Thursday and Friday's schedule isn't out yet, but rest assured, Djokovic will be first up, followed by Federer-Murray. Why? Because the marquee match usually goes second.
While it might've seemed like Wimbledon's scheduling was more favorable to the men during this fortnight, I really don't think it was. At least not intentionally. They made the best schedule they could each day working with the limitations Wimbledon presents. With no night matches, no play on the middle Sunday and no final set tiebreaks, they have to make sure they allot enough time for each match to finish. And if it rains, they're screwed. They often have to adjust on the fly, too (as evidence by moving the end of Monfils-Simon from Court 1 to Centre Court with the roof closed so they could finish Saturday night).
So, was their scheduling "unfair?" No. At least not intentionally. And it's really the last thing anybody should be talking about. Especially at this point in the tournament. The finals are this weekend. Let's focus on that.
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