Naomi Osaka fired back at Stefanos Tsitsipas who claimed women should play best-of-five sets at grand slams. Currently, the men must win three sets in order to emerge victorious in a grand slam match, whereas the women must win two.
While competing at the Miami Open, the Greek star said: “I don’t want to be controversial or anything. There is also the topic of equal pay and everything, women getting equal pay for playing best-of-three, then getting equal pay for playing best-of-five. I don’t know… Maybe they can also play best-of-five, I guess. For Grand Slams, best-of-five, I like it.”
Osaka, 24, who is also competing at the tournament in Florida and has made it to the semi-finals, responded to the world number five's suggestion by joking that the men should play nine sets. “Does he want to play nine sets? If he tries to extend mine, I'm going to extend his,” she said with a wry smile during a post-match press conference.
“This guy is so funny, man. I don't know. I feel like that would change the structure of tennis. Like people will start doing things differently in the gym and stuff like that. It will probably also take a very long time to be implemented, but also, a man is talking about a women's sport, so I don't think his idea is going to go through.”
She added: “I don't want to be rude. I'm really trying to structure this in a way that's not like off-putting, but I think it's like decades of hard work. Up until now, women have been putting in the work. It's not just like, oh, it's come out of nowhere that you get paid the same.
“The history of the WTA has been leading them into advocating for equal pay with Billie Jean King, Venus [Williams], Serena [Williams] all that.” Tsitsipas, who was knocked out of the Miami Open by teenage sensation Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets, claimed he enjoyed best-of-five set tennis, but believed there would be more variety among grand slam winners if they were moved to the shorter format of best-of-three for the men.
He added: “I like the best of five. I think it gets very physical. It makes for a great show, as well. On the other side, on the other hand, we would have seen much more variety when it comes to different Grand Slam winners if it was best-of-three, I believe.
“I very much believe that the winners of Grand Slams would be very different if the format was best-of-three in men."
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) trialled best-of-five set matches at the season-ending WTA Finals between 1984 and 1998, but reverted back to three sets.
