to think women could play best of 5 sets too?

[FuzzyFairy]

I'm an armchair tennis player. I've not played since school, but love watching it so I could be wrong about the physical capabilities.

However, I do wonder why female players are expected to only play best of 3 sets while men play best of 5?

I think it should be equal pay for equal play. It doesn't matter if the contest is finished in an hour or seven hours. It could still be equal sets to play.

Is the difference just an out-dated rule or is there a physical reason behind it?

Some women players have asked for the women to play 5 sets in the grand slams, like the men, but it have been turned down by the organisers as it can't be fitted in time-wise. Women shouldn't be paid less because they are denied the opportunity to play longer.

I also think it's misleading to say that the women don't have to work as hard. Ignoring the fact that the men play best-of-three in the vast majority of tournaments, it in no way reflects the work involved - They are working just as hard to reach that standard and win their matches - They are training day in and day out for long hours.

By the same reckoning would you say 100 metre sprinters were slackers who don't know the meaning of hard work because they only work for about 10 seconds a day? Would you say being a 400m athlete involves 4 times as much work and deserves 4 times the reward?

In some ways, I also think best of three is more harsh because you can't afford to not be on top of your game for a few games or take time to find your form. People praise top male players who aren't playing to their best in the first couple of sets but then raise their game and fight back over 5 sets - and, yes, it's impressive - but, if they'd been playing best of three they would have been out of tournament if they'd played like that.

As a good feminist, I support equality, and I think it should work both ways.

If the women are competing for equal prize money in the grand slam tournaments, they should play the same number of sets as the men. Equal work for equal pay.

Outside the slams, the ATP and the WTA are completely separate organisations, with separate tournaments, so the need for parity does not apply.

Excellent post, Rach168. May I also point out that several of the women's matches in the earlier rounds at Wimbledon were as long as or even longer than the men's matches of 3 or 4 sets. For example, Dominika Cibulkova beat Annieszka Radwanska in a 3 hour match in their quarter final match on Tuesday.

Equal pay is about ensuring that women are given the opportunity to earn as much as men.

There is no rule in tennis that I am aware of that prevents women from entering the men's competition, playing five sets, and having the opportunity to win the full prize money associated with that.

All they need to do is qualify, and then win the appropriate number of games against top-ranked male opposition. Since they can't do that there is the women's competition instead. Serena might manage, with a following wind and a lot of luck, to beat a man ranking in the three hundreds, but Wimbledon isn't a competition consisting of a load of men ranked in the three hundreds, and it's in any event unlikely she'd be that lucky five times running even against low-ranked opposition. The only occasions that top-flight women have played top-flight men have involved huge changes to the rules, and the men won anyway.

Players are not just paid for the number of matches they play. They're played for the amount of training they have to put in and the expenses they incur - travel, coaching, fitness teams etc. These would be identical costs for the top men and women.

Sorry, for the number of sets they play.