{"id":85671,"date":"2025-08-21T19:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/85671\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T19:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:17:08","slug":"how-big-is-the-tennis-gender-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/85671\/","title":{"rendered":"How Big Is the Tennis Gender Gap?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTennis is the only professional sport in the world in which the earnings of the top women\u2019s players can nearly match those of the top men\u2019s players\u2014four of the seven tennis players<\/a> who made more than $20 million from endorsements and prize money combined over the past 12 months are women.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut how do these superstars stack up when they share the court together? The 2025 U.S. Open<\/a>\u2019s mixed doubles tournament, featuring a new format, gave us a window into answering this question. This year, the USTA attempted to breathe life into a Grand Slam event that was often viewed as an afterthought by offering a $1 million cash prize, moving it to the week before the main draw and enlisting the top singles players to participate.<\/p>\n

\n\tSportico tallied the sample of all 1,180 points from the tournament, in which the world\u2019s best men\u2019s and women\u2019s singles players hit and served to each other; from this, we can glean insights into the gender dynamics of mixed doubles.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, it\u2019s no surprise that the serving team won a higher percentage of points when men served to women, and a lower percentage when women served to men. Teams won 72% of service points with the former combination, but only 55% with the latter. \u201cGuys serve a lot bigger, so it\u2019s always helpful,\u201d semifinalist Jessica Pegula said. \u201cA little bit of a different strategy on my side because obviously girls don\u2019t serve as big.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe average male player in this year\u2019s mixed doubles field stands more than 6-foot-3, whereas the average female player was under 5-foot-10. As a result, men tend to have faster serves on average, and women\u2019s shorter wingspans limit their ability to return well-placed serves or serves with spin carrying the ball away from them. Indeed, 6-foot-5 Taylor Fritz aced 5-foot-5 Sara Errani on five of 12 first serves, and 6-foot-11 Reilly Opelka aced 5-foot-11 Karolina Muchov\u00e1 on five of 11 tries. Overall, men aced women on 13% of first serves in the event.<\/p>\n

\n\tSomewhat counterintuitively, though, women serving to women won 63% of points, a tad higher than the 62% won by men serving to men. This is surprising considering that service hold percentage is higher in men\u2019s doubles than women\u2019s doubles and in men\u2019s singles as compared to women\u2019s singles. The women also aced each other less than the men aced each other (3% of first serves vs. 5%).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe gender of the net player, though, makes a big difference in mixed doubles. When women serve, their male partner may have a longer reach at the net to poach and put away mediocre returns, whereas when men serve to men, their female partner at the net likely has less range to finish points on the second shot with a volley.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis importance of the net player was salient when watching the eventual champions, doubles specialists Errani and Andrea Vavassori. Errani had the slowest serve in the tournament, but the team won 63% of points on her serve, and an even higher 65% when she served to men (22 out of 34).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Vavassori] moves so well at the net. Singles players don\u2019t think about [a net player] crossing when someone serves at 70 miles an hour,\u201d runner-up Casper Ruud said. \u201cYou feel like you hit a good return, but he\u2019s there, and he puts away a volley.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tErrani\u2019s success in the tournament also demonstrates that there\u2019s more to serving than pure velocity, especially in doubles. \u201c[Her serve] is not apparently strong if you\u2019re looking at the miles per hour, but she has good placement on the serve\u2026 a lot of topspin, a lot of slice, and she mixes her targets well,\u201d semifinalist Danielle Collins said. \u201cIt\u2019s tricky, for a lot of the guys especially, because the guys don\u2019t see that type of serve very often.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite some statistical differences, the full picture painted by the data shows that women more than hold their own on the court, as they still won the majority of points when serving to their male peers. \u201cThere\u2019s not much difference,\u201d Pegula said of her experience between playing mixed doubles versus women\u2019s doubles.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the early rounds of the tournament, there were even two instances of a woman acing a man, including 45-year-old Venus Williams rocketing one past 27-year-old Andrey Rublev at 105 miles per hour and earning a roar from the crowd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis is the only professional sport in the world in which the earnings of the top women\u2019s players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[9872,64,63,62680,85,747,49529],"class_list":["post-85671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-analytics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-data-viz","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-u-s-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}