One can’t expect sports in general or tennis in particular to display greater integrity than, say, politics. Whenever aggressive, highly motivated people compete for great prizes, human nature is put to a test it doesn’t always pass.
And prizes at this year’s Wimbledon were the greatest ever: £3 million for the winner, £1.5 million for the finalist – and that’s equally for both the men and the women (we’ll talk about that travesty later). Triple that for additional endorsement income, and one can see how certain corners may be cut.
However, never in the tournament’s history has that scissor job been as blatant as in 2025. Both the men’s and women’s singles champions have served drug bans within the past 12 months, both amounting to a slap on the wrist.
Yannick Sinner twice tested positive for an illegal steroid, and Iga Swiatek’s boost came from a banned heart medication. Both of them received token suspensions, three months for Sinner, one month for Swiatek. The authorities made sure neither player would miss any Grand Slam events.
Sinner actually claimed that the drug entered his system while a physiotherapist, a perfectly legal user of the substance, was giving him a massage. Of course, happens all the time. I’ll try that line if I’m ever stopped for DUI.
Another player tested positive for cocaine a few years ago and got away with a derisory punishment by claiming he had merely kissed a girl who had just snorted a line at a party.
Yet another one was eventually exonerated by explaining that the drugs in her body had come from eating steroid-laden beef. My advice would be to desist from scoffing a whole cow in one sitting, the kind of gluttony that indeed can deliver a noticeable dose of illegal substances.
Really, chaps, let’s heed Ben Franklin’s adage of honesty being the best policy. Tennis authorities should abandon silly subterfuge and make any kind of chemical stimulation legal. That way athletes could openly endorse big pharmaceutical companies, pouring even more money into the sport.
In addition to the plethora of other logos players display on their kit, they could then sport those of Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca and others. When making his emetic “I’d like to thank” speech, a player could add to the list his pharma sponsor, “without whose R&D department I woulda never went on to win”.
Speaking of emetic endorsements, few can compete with Bjorn Borg’s. Interviewed by The Times, the ex-champion uttered some sweet nothings about tennis before getting to the heart of the matter:
“I wear a Rolex Day-Date watch. My Day-Date came out in 1956 – the year I was born. When I look at it, I think back to the successes I had on the tennis court. It’s the perfect fit.”
As a former adman, I admire the way Bjorn stayed on brief: the Rolex campaign has always directly linked tennis success with the watches. It leaves the viewer in little doubt that, had Bjorn worn, say, an Omega or Patek Phillippe, he would never have won five Wimbledon titles.
The interview was illustrated with a large photograph of Borg, the promoted item prominently, nay brazenly, displayed on his wrist. I don’t mean this as a criticism: Bjorn’s high-earning days are 40 years behind him, and he has to scratch a living wherever he can find it.
What I do object to strenuously is one of the sweet nothings he did say about his sport: “I love to watch women play. I think they should be paid the same as men and they are [in grand slams]. If you look at men’s and women’s tennis today, they are equal.”
Liar, liar, your shorts are on fire. I’d happily accept the first sentence, but only if the word “play” were excised. As to the other two sentences, they are ridiculous, coming from a man who knows everything there is to know about the game.
The issue of equal pay regularly comes up during every major tournament (including, I’m sorry to say, in this space). Pundits who take issue with this outrage usually point out that men play best of five sets matches, and the women best out of three.
This means that men get paid much less per hour on court. One pundit, for example, calculated that at a recent Australian Open, the winning woman got paid £54,000 per hour more than her male counterpart.
But that, to me, isn’t the whole story. The real problem is that the women are simply not as good, mutatis mutandis. It’s not their fault that they are physiologically weaker and slower than the men, meaning they can’t hit as hard or run as fast. Yet there’s no physiological reason for them not to develop the same technical competence.
That they woefully fail to do, which any viewer of this year’s Wimbledon final will confirm. Amanda Anisimova, the losing finalist (and recipient of the £1.5 million runner-up cheque) has a glaring technical problem with her forehand.
This explains why she lost her final 6-0, 6-0 in 57 minutes, the first time that feat had been achieved in 114 years. Now, it’s not only the prize funds but also the ticket prices that are the same for the men and the women. This year, the cheapest ticket for either final was £240 and the most expensive one £315.
That is if they were bought at the box office, which many weren’t. I don’t know how much the touts were charging, but I’d guess at least double the list price. Borg is fortunate that he didn’t have to pay for his ticket, but those poor souls who did probably couldn’t help figuring out how much that sorry spectacle cost them per minute.
There exists a cabal among commentators, all of whom have to know better, to talk up the women’s game, trying to justify the gross iniquity of equal pay for unequal work. In this case, the chorus sings the same line in unison: poor Amanda was overcome with nerves, which is why she couldn’t hit a forehand over the net and between the white lines.
Of course, she was nervous – everyone appearing on Centre Court is, especially if such appearances aren’t customary for the player. That’s why every male professional spends thousands of hours grooving his strokes to the point where they become automatic and more or less immune to pressure.
‘More or less’ are the operative words. A nervous newcomer to Centre Court is bound to miss a fair share of the kind of shots he’d normally make with his eyes closed. And many a match has been lost because of the pressure of the occasion.
But not love and love, with every other forehand either hitting the net or flying into another county. When that happens, it testifies to an insufficient commitment to the game, to not enough hours spent on the practice court.
More generally, it testifies to the overall lower level of the women’s game, which makes their equal pay just an extension of politicised wokery. But you’ll never read or see a commentator say that in commercial media. Nerves yes, technical incompetence – absolutely not, not if they want to see the inside of a TV studio ever again.
Anywhere you look, tennis displays the same festering ulcers as the rest of society. It would be silly to expect anything else. But I’m sorry to see the likes of Bjorn Borg prostituting themselves so openly. There was never anything wrong with his forehand.