The first racket of the world, the Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek, advocated for equality of prize money in WTA and ATP tournaments.
“Tennis is one of the sports where we talk about equality. I still think that the situation here is better than in most sports.
However, there is still a lot we can work on in terms of getting the same prize money in a WTA tournament as compared to an ATP tournament of the same level. The Grand Slam tournaments, as we know, are already equal. It’s nice, but of course it would be nice if the WTA focused on that. However, I don’t really want to go into details because this is a lot of business and sometimes politics.
I can just say that it would be nice for our sport if the prize money were equal, especially since we do the same job. I also meet people who say that men’s tennis is nicer to watch and guys can do better because they are physically and biologically stronger. But right now, in principle, I think that we are even more stable than the guys in our game. Watching women’s tennis evokes the same emotions, and sometimes even more, because we are women and we are a little more emotional,” Swiatek said at a press conference.
In the second round of the tournament in Madrid, Swiatek will meet with the Australian Julia Graber.