Tennis and the illusion of equal pay

Tennis led the movement for equal prize money in sport. But 55 years later, pay parity remains a sore point, even at majors

- Deepti Patwardhan

Last week, the US Open announced the "largest purse in tennis history" for the 2025 edition. The final Grand Slam of the season, which gets underway in New York on 24 August, will have a total prize pot of $90 million, with the men's and women's singles champions set to pocket a cool $5 million each. It is a dazzling sum, dazzling enough to maintain the illusion of equal pay in tennis.

While the four Grand Slam tournaments (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open) do offer equal prize money, they constitute only eight weeks on a 11-month-long calendar. Outside of the majors, women's players continue to earn significantly less.

The disparity is apparent even at two of the biggest US Open tune-up events. The ongoing Cincinnati Open and the Canadian Open, which ran from 27 July-8 August, are both designated 1000 level events—a tournament tier one rung below the four majors. Despite that, the prize money on offer for the men's event was over $9 million and that for the women's event was just over $5 million. Ben Shelton, who won the men's singles title at the Canadian Open, got $1,124,380 while the women's singles champion, Victoria Mboko, earned $752,275.

The gender pay gap widens down the ladder—the first-round loser in the men's event got $23,760 as opposed to $12,770 at the women's event. With all the men's tournaments reduced to best-of-three sets outside the majors, the previous argument of "more money because they play five sets" does not hold water anymore. They play the same best-of-three format, the same number of rounds in the same number of days at the same level of tournament. Yet women earn less.