{"id":59784,"date":"2025-08-10T19:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T19:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/59784\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T19:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T19:18:07","slug":"taylor-townsend-calls-for-two-changes-that-tennis-badly-needs-to-make-were-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/59784\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Townsend calls for two changes that tennis badly needs to make, \u2018we\u2019re human beings’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Taylor Townsend has not held back on what she feels is wrong about tennis at the moment.<\/p>\n

Townsend is the current doubles world number one<\/a>, and she has also shown some improved singles form during the North American hard court swing.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old has experience competing alongside players on both the WTA<\/a> and ATP<\/a> Tours, with Townsend partnering Ben Shelton in the US Open mixed doubles event<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n

Despite playing alongside men\u2019s players a lot of the time, Townsend has now called out a disparity in how they are treated compared to women.<\/p>\n

\"TaylorPhoto by Scott Taetsch\/Getty ImagesTaylor Townsend believes tennis needs to make two big changes<\/p>\n

Townsend is already a trailblazer in tennis, as the only mother in tennis history to become world number one in doubles.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Claytenis.com<\/a>, Townsend was asked if she thinks tennis needs to make more risks and the American had a pretty emphatic response.<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cYeah, I do. There\u2019s definitely room for improvement \u2014 with the rules, the scheduling, a lot of things need to be reassessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many players including Carlos Alcaraz have been critical of tennis scheduling<\/a>, but that was not the only thing Townsend believes needs changing.<\/p>\n

When asked to elaborate on her previous statement, Townsend also called out the lack of equal prize money between ATP and WTA<\/a> tournaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cA big one is the schedule \u2014 there\u2019s no real off-season,\u201d said Townsend. \u201cAnd when it comes to prize money, the distribution throughout the year isn\u2019t balanced, aside from the Slams and a few Masters 1000s, since not all of them offer equal prize money. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just the playing schedule \u2014 it\u2019s also the travel, the constant changes in location, the surface shifts, the ball changes. We\u2019re always adjusting. And the people making the rules don\u2019t go through that.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet we\u2019re expected to perform at our best every single week. At the end of the day, we\u2019re human beings \u2014 not robots.\u201d<\/p>\n

All four Grand Slam tournaments have had equal prize money for men and women since 2007, but that is not always the case on the ATP and WTA Tour.<\/p>\n

A relevant example of this is at the Cincinnati Open<\/a>, where both men and women play best-of-three set matches.<\/p>\n

Despite playing on the same courts and in the same format, the total prize pot for the ATP event in Cincinnati is $4,040,941 greater than the WTA tournament.<\/p>\n

Townsend has reached the third round at the Cincinnati Open in singles, but will earn $27,560 less than her male counterparts.<\/p>\n

To counteract this, the WTA is currently on a pathway to equal prize money and intends to have the same prize pot as the ATP Tour for all combined 1000 events by 2027.<\/p>\n

EventWFSFQFRound of 16Round of 32Round of 64Round of 128Men\u2019s Singles$1,124,380$597,890$332,160$189,075$103,225$60,400$35,260$23,760Women\u2019s singles$752,275$391,600$206,100$106,900$56,678$32,840$18,200$11,270Men\u2019s doubles$457,150$242,020$129,970$65,000$34,850$19,050\u2014\u2014Women\u2019s doubles$262,780$139,120$74,700$37,360$19,970$10,950\u2014\u2014Would Taylor Townsend support a merger between the ATP and WTA Tours?<\/p>\n

There has previously been speculation about a potential merger between the two tours, which could see ATP and WTA players having a more aligned schedule.<\/p>\n

This is something that Townsend has revealed she would support, citing her time playing on the World TeamTennis league.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely. I think it would be amazing,\u201d claimed Townsend. \u201cI played World TeamTennis for seven years, and having men and women on the same team was always a lot of fun. A joint tour would be great \u2014 aligning the schedules and making things more consistent would really help.\u201d<\/p>\n

There has been no announcement of any plans for a merger anytime soon, but the Cincinnati Open is one of the tournaments that does host both ATP and WTA players at the same time.<\/p>\n

Townsend will look to achieve her best ever singles result at the Cincinnati Open, when she plays Jessica Bouzas Maneiro for a place in the fourth round.<\/p>\n

She will also play in the doubles event as a former champion, playing alongside Shuai Zhang as the third seeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taylor Townsend has not held back on what she feels is wrong about tennis at the moment. Townsend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,23967,593,4306],"class_list":{"0":"post-59784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-taylor-townsend","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-wta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}