John McEnroe, who reached the semi-finals of the All England tennis championship as a teenage qualifier 40 years ago, has a new memoir out titled But Seriously. Doing interviews related to the book, McEnroe was baited into making comments that were widely interpreted as sexist. It is worth reproducing what he said in full, and in context. Lulu Garcia-Navarro of NPR brought Serena Williams into the conversation at one point.
Garcia-Navarro: Let’s talk about Serena Williams. You say she is the best female player in the world in the book.
McEnroe: Best female player ever – no question.
Garcia-Navarro: Some wouldn’t qualify it, some would say she’s the best player in the world. Why qualify it?
McEnroe: Oh! Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?
Garcia-Navarro: Yeah, the best tennis player in the world. You know, why say female player?
McEnroe: Well because if she was in, if she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world.
The pay debate
Commentators such as Carron Phillips of the New York Daily News labelled McEnroe misogynistic, but didn’t pin down precisely where his misogyny lay. Serena Williams herself has said she probably wouldn’t win a single game in any match against the world’s top male players. Isn’t it reasonable, when nominating the greatest player in the world, to consider only those capable of beating all others? Why should such plain logic be construed as misogynistic?
If you want to know what real misogyny is, look no further than another past Wimbledon champion, Pat Cash. A few years ago, Cash argued that women didn’t deserve equal pay because they didn’t do equal work. They played a maximum of three sets in each Grand Slam match while the men played best-of-five set matches. Without knowing it, Cash was invoking the labour theory of value, which is redundant when it comes to judging salaries of sports stars.
When Rafa Nadal won the French Open last month without dropping a set, did he deserve to be paid less than he would’ve done had each of his matches gone the distance? Of course not. The length of a player’s stay on court is entirely irrelevant to judging how much they ought to earn.
The most famous legal argument related to this issue took place in 1878 and involved a painting. The previous year, London’s Grosvenor Gallery had exhibited the American expat James McNeil Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. The greatest art writer of the age, John Ruskin was offended by Whistler’s indifference to careful detailing, as well as the high price asked for the painting. He wrote in a scathing review that he had, “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”. Whistler sued for libel, and Ruskin engaged the services of Sir John Holker. During his cross-examination, Holker asked how long it had taken Whistler to “knock-off” the painting. The artist replied that The Falling Rocket had been completed in a day or two. “The labour of two days, is that for which you asked two hundred guineas?” Holker asked contemptuously, only to face Whistler’s justly famous response: “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.”
What an artist or sportsperson earns is entirely a factor of what collectors and fans are willing to pay. This works in favour of women tennis players, who can justify getting equal pay in tournaments for doing less work then men, on the basis of sold-out arenas. However, it also cuts against arguments for equal pay in spheres such as salaries of film stars, where feminists invoke the labour theory of value in arguing for parity in wages. That is as illogical as Pat Cash invoking it to justify disparity in prize money.
Punch line
The issue of greatness is rather different from that of income. I’m disinclined to place McEnroe in the same circle of hell as Pat Cash because the argument he makes is fundamentally sound. However, I can offer an alternative which, to my knowledge, has not been brought into the picture though it is perfectly relevant to the issue. It is derived from a different sport: boxing.
A few years ago, ESPN ranked the greatest boxers of all time. Sugar Ray Robinson topped the list. Few would disagree that Robinson belongs near the top, if not at the very pinnacle, for he was a fighter with lightning speed, knockout power, a strong jaw, and the stamina of a horse. Yet, there are as many boxers who would have beaten Robinson as there are tennis players who would beat Williams.
Boxing is divided into weight classes in order to give the smaller guys a chance. Had there been just one division, Robinson would never have won a world title, leave alone becoming a five-time champ as he did in the middleweight category. In rating boxers, experts have developed a concept called pound-for-pound, a notional way to equalise fighters of different weight classes.
If boxers who would win only within hypothetical pound-for-pound match-ups can be ordained the greatest without controversy, why is there so much resistance to speaking of Serena Williams as the greatest tennis player ever? Why not develop a version of boxing’s pound-for-pound comparison, with gender as the variable rather than weight? This would involve a number of factors aside from sheer number of victories, so Williams would be no means be assured of the top spot.
There is, for instance, the quality of her opposition to consider. Joe Louis was so dominant in his reign as heavyweight boxing champ that the press called his opponents the bum of the month club. A few of Williams’ past opponents would qualify for that club, in my opinion. The men’s side of the sport, meanwhile, has seen some of the greatest rivalries in history play out over the past decade.
A second issue would be whether the women’s game relies on a deep enough talent pool. In the case of tennis, it obviously does, for as many girls as boys take to the sport. Cricket in India, on the other hand, is very different, with male players outnumbering females by at least 10 to one at the school level. I would hesitate, on that basis, to rate Mithali Raj as highly as Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli.
Navigating the issues of sporting prowess, gender differences and pay gaps is tricky, and I wish there was less name-calling and more clear reasoning in dealing with these matters. I have shown, through the comparison with boxing’s weight classes, that a female sportsperson could legitimately be called the greatest even though males might be faster, stronger or more skilful. At the same time, we ought to differentiate between obviously sexist claptrap of the Pat Cash type and positions such as McEnroe’s, which might run counter to feminist thinking on an issue but are nevertheless reasonable. Sure, the former world number one could have made his point with more guile and sensitivity. But had he done that, we’d suspect someone had kidnapped
Mac the Mouth and was impersonating him using polyjuice potion.
