Sometime in December last year, towards the end of her extended off-season, Serena Williams had an engagingly lengthy chat on the subject of racial perception in the United States with renowned rapper and fellow American Common as a part of his newest musical venture.

While the conversation, for most parts, remained focused on the American society at large, Williams pointedly digressed on the aspect of greatness and by way of making a comparison between a female and male athlete, noted, “I think if I were a man, I would have been in that conversation (of being the greatest sportsperson) a long time ago. If I were a man, I would have 100% been considered the greatest ever a long time ago.”

Comparing two distinct entities: A tale of old wine in new bottle

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Williams’s outspokenness came to be buried under the hustle and bustle of her and her colleagues trying to make proactive headway in the new season, with attention riveted upon the season’s first big tournament. Now that the Australian Open has been done and dusted, with her and Roger Federer sharing the winners’ podium, the sceptical allusions drawn between their wins have, however, unearthed the debris of what she had been implying, just over a month ago.

And, it’s not the first time that such analogising has been made in their respective long-standing career trajectories that have been quite inter-connected. The conclusion of this year’s Australian Open then went on promote novel approaches to focus on this apparent yawning gap, before narrowing down on the time-tested methodology of statistics as a means to expound on all such theorisation.

Even with numerical data abundantly reflecting the gains Williams has had over Federer, especially in the last few years, an elemental need has been long felt in proclaiming the Swiss as the better player at the cost of the American by employing these same statistical nuances. Variables like the men’s Tour playing best-of-five sets in the Majors as compared to the women’s, who thereby have a curtailed game in best-of-three sets and as such – seemingly – a better rate of recovery from their matches has been broadly iterated between the two champions in the few days that it has taken for the ink to dry on their outcomes at Melbourne Park.

The conflict of incomparable elements

The differences in the regulations of the game aside, both men as well as women, including Williams and Federer, have to get through seven rounds and seven different opponents before laying a claim on the title, which makes it just as difficult for either of them to win. Also, given that often men’s matches wind up in the same time as it takes for women to finish off their matches irrespective of the disparity in the number of sets specified, it’s an uneven tone to even consider broaching these gradations as statistical components.

Ergo, the premise of numerics as a supposedly viable method of comparison between two 35-year-olds proves itself to be flawed, with the numbers conveniently omitting a few necessary details while appearing to present exact figures.

While tennis, with its scoring system and the nature of its biggest event – the Slams – remains the common denominator between Williams and Federer, both are yet factionally separated within this ambit of commonality. For one, they occupy integral positions in two firmly demarcated Pro Tours, with each having its own set of rules and guidelines. Trying to justify the equivalence between the parameters of success between the duo, who have a combined total of 41 Grand Slams, then pertains to a larger obstacle namely that of the blurring line of the divide between the Women’s Tennis Association and the men’s Association of Tennis Professionals Tours.

Established as they were with the intention of lending individualistic identity for their players and bringing about parity to the perceiving of the women’s game vis-à-vis the men’s, the juxtaposition of Serena Williams as an auxiliary to Roger Federer’s achievement has made out the continuity of the WTA to be a gaping paradox.

That in over 40-plus years of the WTA’s existence, which has seen several notable names strive for an equal standing with their male counterparts, many are still finding it hard to accept that a woman re-chartered the scope of consistency better than her peer belonging to the opposite gender is startling. As it’s an equally stooping deliberation upon the ATP, and Federer himself, in that it puts out a misleading acknowledgement about the qualitative benchmarks laid out as a mere accessory to gauge the depths of the WTA, instead of elucidating on the core strength its playing field.

For dual resume that boasts of unprecedented eminence all-throughout, external narratives like these then need to be skipped entirely. Not only to terminate the frequent allegorising of their successes, but to also pave the way for the future that could have the next generation of players subjected to the same routine, without no ideological transition whatsoever.