Sabalenka-Kyrgios: Helping or Hurting Women’s Tennis?

By Staff Writers Veer Mahajan, Kelly Shi & Andy Zhang

Top ranked women’s tennis player Aryna Sabalenka faced Nick Kyrgios in an exhibition match on December 28. Initially dubbed a modern Battle of the Sexes, it soon turned into a narrative reinforcing old stereotypes against women’s athletics following Kyrgios’s victory. This was not the first such match: in 1973, Billie Jean King had beaten former men’s star Bobby Riggs, marking a pivotal moment in sports for women. However, the Sabalenka-Kyrgios showdown yielded a different result — not advancing women’s sports, but setting them back.

A famous match between Venus and Serena Williams and Karsten Braasch in 1998 told a similar story to Sabalenka-Kyrgios. Braasch ranked below the top 200, golfed and drank before the match — yet still won convincingly, as did Kyrgios against Sabalenka. Main event organizers contended that the outcomes were not owed to superior skills or work ethic, but inherent physical advantages men hold over women, mainly “in the upper body, where overall strength of females is about half that of men,” according to the International Tennis Federation. However, the true power of female athletes lies not solely in physical strength, but in versatile playing styles, strategy, and adaptability, qualities recognized neither in Williams-Braasch nor Sabalenka-Kyrgios. 

The structure of the Sabalenka-Kyrgios match reveals more discrepancies in competitive equality. While King-Riggs was played without any special conditions, sending the message of a match of equals, the organizers of the Sabalenka-Kyrgios match sent the opposite message: Sabalenka’s court size was reduced 9%, driving home the damaging idea of women needing special help just to match men. Though marketed as a match promoting tennis and equality of the sexes, the Sabalenka-Kyrgios exhibition match instead discredited women’s tennis, reinforcing outdated beliefs in female athletic inferiority. The match’s weak steps to equality — reducing court size does nothing to address upper body strength discrepancies — did not even the odds, failed to highlight Sabalenka’s true skill, painted her as a lesser player in need of handicaps, and left the match a disappointment in the quest for gender equity in sports.

Though gender equality in tennis is a widely-debated topic, women’s tennis remains seen as inferior to men’s, with critics arguing women’s tennis is not nearly as entertaining or that women do not work as hard in their games as men do. An exhibition pitting men against women when stereotypes are already widespread intensifies stigmas. Though the top-ranked women’s tennis player lost to the 670-ranked men’s tennis player, the issue lies with the organizers’ implementation of an artificial equality, reinforcing stereotypes of men’s sports being superior while discrediting women’s sports. Failing to challenge these bigoted stereotypes, this match is a slap in the face to gender equality within sports, suggesting direct competition cannot be a route to equality in sports.

Successful mixed-gender formats, such as in badminton, track, and swim, prove that structural changes to sports are necessary to achieve equity. These changes highlight individual strengths; within mixed doubles in badminton, for instance, men and women often assume different roles on the court suiting their natural talents: men attack while women control the rally. Mixed games allow men and women to display their talents, and the audience sees the best skills of both genders in competitive, engaging, and high-quality games. The success of these structures reveals the failure of exhibition matches like Sabalenka-Kyrgios. Rather than bridging men’s and women’s sports, such exhibitions further widen the chasm, approaching the issue of inequality in women’s and men’s sports not to unite and uplift, but to divide and put down.

While Sabalenka believes that the match “brought more attention to [tennis] and [she does not] see how it can be bad,” the public does not share this view. Even King, whose 1973 Battle of the Sexes served as the inspiration for this event, could not call the match culturally significant. While King’s win became a pivotal moment in sports history through revealing that women’s sports can also be entertaining in a world where women’s sports were seen as worthless, there is no such social context underlying Sabalenka-Kyrgios. “The only similarity [in the matches] is that one [player] is a boy and one is a girl. That’s it,” King said. 

Exhibition matches like that of Sabalenka-Kyrgios push the stereotype of women’s sports being inferior to men’s while mixed-gender formats show both men’s and women’s sports in a supportive and empowering light. Such formats must be expanded to promote gender equity. Another way to facilitate equality here at MSJ is for students to avoid supporting events that are designed to draw attention by humiliating parties and halting progress. In order to assure progress for women’s sports, including those at MSJ, we must have coverages that value women within sports for their own strengths, instead of using them for publicity. Additionally, increasing attendance and support for girls’ games within the MSJ sports community can also help in advancing equality for the student athletes.