Serena Williams unloads on tournament director for sexist comments
This is 2016, yes? Just making sure. Because Raymond Moore, the director of this weekend’s BNP Paribas Open tournament at Indian Wells, apparently set his watch back about four decades prior to a media Q&A Sunday. Moore answered a question about the Women’s Tennis Association by basically chopping female tennis players off at the knees.
“In my next life when I come back I want to be someone in the WTA,” Moore said, “because they ride on the coattails of the men. They don’t make any decisions and they are lucky. They are very very lucky. If I was a lady player, I’d go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they have carried this sport. They really have.”
Yep. You hear that, “lady players”? Stop complaining about equivalent purses and start thanking the men like good women should!
That in itself would be enough to land Moore in hot social-media water, but Moore followed that up by discussing, yes, the physical attractiveness of the women:
Lest anyone start down the proverbial “everyone is too PC!” road: this is unacceptable and demeaning for the director of a major tournament to dismiss and disregard the efforts of women in the sport … starting with a woman who’s one of the most notable athletes on the planet. And oh, was Serena Williams displeased with Moore’s comments.
Shortly after her match, in which she lost the championship to Victoria Azarenka, Williams lit into Moore’s comments:
“We, as women, have come a long way. We shouldn’t have to drop to our knees at any point,” she said. “In order to make a comment [like Moore did] you have to have history and you have to have facts and you have to knows thing. I mean, you look at someone like Billie Jean King who opened so many doors for not only women’s players but women’s athletes in general. I feel like that is such a disservice to her and every female, not only a female athlete but every woman on this planet that has ever tried to stand up for what they believed in and being proud to be a woman.”
Moore did proffer an apology later in the day:
Times change. Minds need to change, too. This isn’t a matter of “political correctness” or not hurting feelings; this is simple recognition of the vast achievements of women in tennis. Women stand on their own in tennis more than virtually any other sport, and anyone who can’t recognize or credit that simply isn’t paying attention.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
