By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Monday, February 19, 2024
Coco Gauff is aware of what it takes to earn equality on and off court docket.
The 19-year-old Gauff captured her maiden main championship on the US Open final September—and picked up a champion’s test of $3 million, the identical prize cash US Open males’s champion Novak Djokovic earned.
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The world No. 3 has even held her personal, at occasions, enjoying baseline apply video games in opposition to mates Frances Tiafoe and Christopher Eubanks.
“Actually when we practice with guys, a lot of women play baseline games with them. We still win the games sometimes,” Gauff informed the media in Dubai at this time. “I played with Chris a couple times. I played with Frances last year in Indian Wells. I win a couple times; I don’t.
“Baseline video games often, relying on the man’s serve, a few of them haven’t got pretty much as good of serves so we will return it (laughter), however baseline video games are an excellent, widespread floor for us to play.”
Women earn equal prize money as men in the majors. When it comes to pay parity across the board, Gauff asserts women’s tennis—and women’s sports—must do a better marketing job to gain equal ground with men.
“For me I feel the largest factor in that almost all sports activities on the planet, individuals watch the lads’s sport greater than the ladies’s,” said Gauff, a devoted NBA and WNBA fan. “I feel we proceed to carry followers. The drawback can also be we’ve to market our ladies’s sports activities higher, market us higher.
“I think the past couple years I feel like the marketing for women’s sports has been invested more in, and therefore there’s been more watch-ability, people watching. I think if we continue to invest in women’s sports, then it will profit almost the same as the men, garner equal pay.”
Tennis has a bonus in that it is among the few high skilled sports activities the place women and men share the court docket and compete straight in opposition to one another. Gauff is hopeful tennis could be a chief for different sports activities in that respect.
“I’m grateful for us,” Gauff mentioned. “At least on most tournaments, some tournaments on the tour, the Grand Slams obviously, we have equal pay. Hopefully tennis can be the leader of that and fiddle down into other sports, as well.”
Source: www.tennisnow.com
