Former World No. 2 Ones Jaber is outraged that fans are more interested in men’s matches.
Is women’s tennis a special sport? That’s a controversial statement. But spectators, who prefer to watch men’s matches, seem to think so. This is especially true for Grand Slam tournaments where women’s matches are, as always, played in three sets, but men’s matches are played in five sets.
At this year’s Roland Garros, many tickets for the women’s matches were already sold out, because fans expected the men to play. And that caused bewilderment and outrage from former world number two Ons Jaber of Tunisia. Jaber was especially disgusted by the fact that the fans who handed in tickets knowingly consider women’s games uninteresting, although they themselves have never watched them.
“It’s time to change that perception. I find that people don’t watch a lot of women’s games; they assume in advance that it’s going to be a lousy game. But it’s not; there are a lot of extraordinary matches. The women train hard, put in a lot of effort, have the toughest matches.
I’ve met people who say, “Well, women’s matches are lousy.” When I asked them if they watched the women’s matches, they answered in the negative. How can you judge women’s matches without watching them? I hope that view will change because we make sacrifices that men on tour don’t have to make. We have to plan everything in our professional lives,” said Jaber at a press conference after reaching the 1/8 finals of Roland Garros 2023.
Ones also complained that the women’s matches at the current tournament for a long time were not put in the night session – in other words, the organizers did not give the respective games the status of central. The fourth-round match between Arina Sobolenko and Sloane Stephens was the first women’s match at Roland Garros 2023 to be played in the night session. “It’s about time we included a women’s match in the night session. It’s strange that we didn’t originally have both a women’s and men’s match in those sessions. At all the other Grand Slam tournaments, the women play in night sessions. I played pretty late in both Australia and the US Open. It’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s at least fair to the two sexes,” said the athlete.
