Victoria Azarenka is right. She and Roger Federer are different. As is men’s and women’s tennis

Reporter: “Did Roger [Federer] with four kids doing the rounds for so many years kind of inspire you?”

Victoria Azarenka: “No, Roger [Federer] definitely did not inspire me. No disrespect to him. But, it’s a little different for him.”

The former world No 1 and two-time former Australian Open champion chose to respond to the above question light-heartedly when it was posed to her in the press-conference after her second-round win over Elena Vesnina on Wednesday. But, while she was good-natured enough to brush it off as funny, neither her affableness nor her courteous answer were enough to cover up the ridiculousness of the question. Factually, vis-à-vis Federer. And from the macro perspective, the continuance of the gender-divide that still continues to prevail within the sport.

Why particularly Federer?

To begin with, although Federer has proven himself to be prodigious alongside being a worthy ambassador of the sport – time and again – by no means is the Swiss the first player to have embraced the sport after having experiencing parenthood for the first time.

Men’s tennis’ history features a slew of players returning to familiar tennis haunts as first-time fathers, without much ado. One of whom is Fabio Fognini, whose wife (and 2015 US Open champion) Flavia Pennetta gave birth to their first child a couple of months ago. There are also a visible number of players, beginning with Jimmy Connors at the 1982 Wimbledon, who have gone on to win Majors after having had their first child. Federer, too, is included in this number. As are two of his current-day rivals, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, who have played on the Tour (and triumphantly at that) after becoming fathers.

So, as such, the element of novelty and astonishment with which the question was posed to Azarenka is quite bemusing. It’s as though recent happenings have been conveniently brushed off in order to forcibly bring the focus upon Federer, who was also asked about Azarenka rejoining the Tour after his second-round win against Dusan Lajovic on Thursday.

It’s here that the overall inconsiderateness of the subject at-hand makes itself felt. With female tennis players still being perceived as a subset of their male counterparts.

One, by way of obliquely drawing a comparison between Federer and Azarenka. And the other, by holding up the latter’s return to tennis against the former’s continuity as if it were the barometer to gauge whether she was on the right track to reclaim back what she had left on the Tour during her maternity break.

Same old, same old

This line of thought is also an extension to the recent comments John McEnroe made about Serena Williams’ purported ranking had she been playing on the men’s Tour instead of being a dominant force in the women’s. McEnroe gushed about Williams at the offset before finishing off with his bizarre rationale. But for all his opining that she was an “incredible” athlete, it only sought to his emphasise his point that Williams was only as good as someone ranked so far down in the ranking rungs.

The aspect that juts out of these assumptions is that in order to be taken seriously in their own right, female tennis players have to prove themselves against men. At times, even if the entirety of their career achievements is more than what the male players they are sought to be pooled with have had achieved.

Invariably then, it’s also men who come up with such theorising. Because, in seeking to add relevance to their narratives, it’s quite easy to fixate upon the so-called superior gender bias in order to square things to one’s liking.

Through the looking glass

As far as being a source of inspiration is concerned, making a comeback to the Tour barely six months after having a child is an inspiration in itself. And, if beyond wanting to peer beyond herself and several others who have etched a successful story of their tennis return upon being a mother, Azarenka has a lot of fellow-mothers to look up to, and for company. Not only within the tennis fraternity, but also in other sports as well.

Thus, offhand, it’s not something new that the Belarusian, who gave birth to her son Leo in December 2016, is trying to do in making a comeback to competitive tennis. Both before her and even concurrently – from the likes of Russian player Evgeniya Rodina to German pro Tatjana Maria – there have been women tennis professionals who have rejoined tennis’ rungs after taking suitable time-off for motherhood.

But where Rodina and Maria have continued to be low-profile, it’s Azarenka’s prominence that is making headways despite the briefness of her comeback, starting at the Mallorca Open in June.

Additionally, in this context, the focus by way of Azarenka also extends to her predecessors namely, Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong-Cawley and Kim Clijsters. Each of whom who won Majors in the 1970s, 1980s and the first decade of the 2000s respectively. Being Grand Slam champions as they were, they were expected to make the most by way of their respective returns, as and when it came about.

The eloquence that these women struck in resuming their careers successfully has lent itself indelibly to Azarenka who, despite only having played two rounds yet. is expected to go farther. Not only in the Wimbledon 2017 draw, but also across the season hereafter.