«If you are a woman, you have little chance of survival»- Corriere.it

From up there, from the tennis penthouse with a view of the world, it is difficult to understand how things are going for normal mortals. Whoever was eliminated in the first round of the Australian Open, for example Matteo Berrettini, pocketed a check from $106,250 aussie (71,367 Americans), but that was the first round of the Grand Slam, the circuit of the four richest tournaments, not everyone can afford to participate based on the ranking and outside the rotary tournaments that distribute the most points and the most prize money, it’s a jungle. Especially if you are a female tennis player.

Denis Shapovalov, a talented left-handed Canadian who has not yet managed to express his full potential, 23 years old, top 10 in 2020 today dropped to number 30 in the ATP ranking but crucial in winning the Davis Cup in Malaga in 2022, he realized it thanks to his Swedish girlfriend Mirjam Bjorklund, born in 1998, a native of Stockholm, never climbed beyond the 123rd position in the WTA ranking, one of the many carneades that populate the minor tournaments, today n.145. “When I started going to the circuit, I naively thought that men and women were treated equally,” wrote the Canadian on March 8, Women’s Day. “The Players Tribune”, the online journal that often collects the most intimate thoughts of sports champions -. Then my girlfriend Mirjam (we have been together since 2019) opened my eyes. Last year she qualified for a WTA 250, the fifth tier of tournaments below the Slams, the WTA Finals, the Masters 1000 and the WTA 500. I told her: great, at least you will earn 7,000 dollars just for being in board. Denis but where do you live, he replied: if I get 100 dollars that’s a lot».

The gender gap in rights, the battle that the pioneer of pasionaria Billie Jean King began in the distant 70s when tennis players did not have their own circuit and sponsors refused to support women’s sport, concerns every aspect of the profession: BJ stood for basic justice (having a network of tournaments for girls to play), the players of the US national team took the American Football Federation to court over a question, even more than money, of discriminatory treatment (inadequate training fields, inferior hotels, flights in economy class compared to the business class of the men, who also won infinitely less than the four World Cups and the four Olympic gold medals of girls), the players in the Italian Serie A had to wait until 2022 to be recognized by the FIGC (promise kept) as “professionals” and, with it, the minimum rights (pension, job retention in case of injury, maternity leave , health care).

The problem is very large, in short, e Mirjam Bjorklund – in its small way – it represents it perfectly. “The gender gap makes no sense, it’s totally unfair! – Shapovalov is indignant in his pamphlet -. If you’re a woman, you have little chance of survival in the tennis world. Yet girls fill stadiums, have excellent television ratings, are perfect testimonials for brands: they have nothing less than men. Last year, a men’s (500m) and a women’s (250m) tournament were played at the same time in Washington. Yet to win the first round match, a tennis player earned $14,280 and a female tennis player only $4,100. It’s less than a third! I lost the ATP 250 final in Seoul last year: I took 100,000 dollars. What happened to Billie Jean King’s equality battles?

Mirjam’s case touches Shapovalov closely, of course. But it’s also the thought of the sacrifices faced by her mother — the former Ukrainian Jewish tennis player Tessa, who played for the Soviet Union and then moved to Israel (where Denis was born on April 15, 1999) together with her Russian husband Viktor Shapovalov before moving permanently to Canada — to have prompted the top player to sue. «My mother put me on the field when I was 5, we lived in Toronto, she taught tennis. She’s the one who made me play a one-handed backhand, just like my idol Roger Federer. She met the sports system of the Soviet Union, which left tennis players no chance to explore their talent. It’s with this experience in her life that mom fought all her life to offer me a world of opportunities. Now do you understand why discrimination against women bothers me so much?».

Mirjam Bjorklund earned $395,370 in her career (it must be remembered that tennis is a high-cost sport if you want to afford a full-time coach and, perhaps, a physical trainer and a physiotherapist). How much her boyfriend Denis Shapovalov would have pocketed by qualifying for the quarterfinals of the last Australian Open (383,172)if he got there.