Benutzer:Mac1405/Virginia Slims Circuit
The Virginia Slims Circuit[1] was a tennis tour consisting of a group of originally nine female professional players. Formed in 1970, the Virginia Slims Circuit eventually became the basis for the later WTA Tour.[2] The players, dubbed the Original 9, rebelled against the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) because of the wide inequality between the amount of prize money paid to male tennis players and to female tennis players.[3]
Background
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]The Open era began with the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth in 1968. At the first Open Wimbledon, the prize-fund difference was 2.5:1 in favour of men. Billie Jean King won £750 for taking the title, while Rod Laver took £2,000. The total purses of the competitions were £14,800 for men and £5,680 for women.[4] By the 1970s, the pay difference which had been a 2.5:1 ratio between men and women had increased. In 1969, ratios of 5:1 in terms of pay were common at smaller tournaments; by 1970, these figures increased to 8:1 and even 12:1.[5]
The situation came to a head in 1970, when most tournaments offered four times as much prize money to men than they did to women. At the 1970 Italian Open, men's singles champion Ilie Năstase was paid US$3,500 while women's singles champion King received just US$600.[6] On top of this, the USLTA failed to organise any tournaments for women in 1970.[7]
The campaign
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]Vorlage:More citations needed section King and eight other female tennis players – Americans Rosemary Casals, Nancy Richey, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, and Julie Heldman;[8] and Australians Kerry Melville Reid and Judy Tegart Dalton – decided to enlist World Tennis magazine publisher Gladys Heldman to help negotiate for greater equality in prize money and provide valuable public relations assistance. All the players were putting their tennis careers at risk because the influential USLTA did not back them.
Gladys Heldman and the "Original 9" decided to target the Pacific Southwest Championships held in Los Angeles on the grounds that it paid eight times more money to men than it did to women. Heldman attempted to get the tournament chairman, former professional tennis player Jack Kramer, to reduce the inequality between the prize money purses for men and women. Kramer refused, leading the "Original 9" to declare at a press conference held at Forest Hills, New York that they would boycott the Pacific Southwest Championships and play at what would become the first Virginia Slims Circuit event, a US$7,500 tournament held in Houston, Texas in September 1970.[9] Despite the USLTA's declaration that it would not sanction this event, the "Original 9" went ahead, with Casals defeating Dalton in the final 5–7, 6–1, 7–5.
The formation
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]Vorlage:More citations needed section Heldman, with the assistance of Joe Cullman of Philip Morris, then offered US$5,000 out of her own pocket to allow the "Original 9" to sign token $1 contracts and set up their own tour of eight professional tournaments in 1970.[10][11] The tour was sponsored by Virginia Slims. This independent women's professional tennis circuit provided more equalVorlage:Clarify prize money than had been provided previously by the USLTA and other organisations.[12] Despite the USLTA's suspension of the "Original 9" from its tournaments, by the end of the year the Virginia Slims Circuit was able to boost its numbers from nine to forty members, which helped pave the way for the first full year season of the Circuit in 1971. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the creation of the Women's Tennis Association in 1973, the Virginia Slims Circuit would eventually absorb the ILTF's Women's Grand Prix circuit and become the WTA Tour.
See also
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]References
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]- General
- Bodo, Peter: The Courts of Babylon. S. 128–29. ([1])
- Collins, Bud: The Bud Collins History of Tennis. S. 154–55.
- Specific
Further reading
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]Vorlage:WTA seasons Vorlage:Women's tennis seasons
[[Category:Defunct tennis tours]] [[Category:WTA Tour|+]] [[Category:History of tennis]] [[Category:Virginia Slims tennis tournaments| ]]
- ↑ Tour honoured by women's sports foundation. Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, 14. Oktober 2008, abgerufen am 10. Mai 2009.
- ↑ The "Original 9". In: Women's Sports Foundation. 19. Juni 2012, abgerufen am 5. März 2019 (amerikanisches Englisch).
- ↑ King, original 9 reunite to honor women's tennis. Abgerufen am 7. April 2012.
- ↑ Billie Jean King, Cynthia Starr: We Have Come a Long Way. Regina Ryan Publishing, 1988, ISBN 0-07-034625-9, Birth of a Tour, 116 (archive.org).
- ↑ King & Starr, p. 120.
- ↑ 'We've come a long way, baby' -- Honoring the 'Original 9' in 'Battle of the Sexes'. In: espnW. Abgerufen am 5. März 2019.
- ↑ admin: Looking Back On The Original Nine. In: WTA Tennis. 23. September 2015, abgerufen am 5. März 2019 (englisch).
- ↑ Nick Friend, for: 'Tennis gave me the ability to be somebody': Julie Heldman on depression and bottling up abuse. In: CNN. Abgerufen am 5. März 2019.
- ↑ The tour story - One of the greatest stories in sport. Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, archiviert vom am 18. Februar 2009; abgerufen am 9. Mai 2009.
- ↑ Paula Vergara: A league of their own: The historical grassroots of the WTA Tour. On the Baseline, abgerufen am 10. Mai 2009.
- ↑ Billie Jean King | Virginia Slims Tour | American Masters | PBS. In: American Masters. 4. August 2013, abgerufen am 5. März 2019 (amerikanisches Englisch).
- ↑ Selena Roberts: Tennis' other 'Battle of the Sexes', before King-Riggs In: The New York Times, 21 August 2005. Abgerufen im 9 May 2009