Serena Williams Urged To Follow Federer's, Nadal's Example To Strengthen Women's Tennis

Serena Williams was urged to lead the way in helping women’s tennis get stronger in the future not only in terms of the prize money on offer, but also opportunities at grassroot levels of the game.

Judy Murray, mother of former world number one Andy Murray, wants all the top players of this generation to push for changes needed.

Pay parity in tennis was a major talking point since the start of the Open Era with Billy Jean King being the first to fight for women to be given the same prize money as their male counterparts. Her cause was later taken up by Venus Williams, who publicly called for pay parity at Wimbledon in 2005 and was successful as they followed suit with the other majors in handing equal payments to both the men’s and women’s singles winners.

It is now just over a decade since there is pay parity in the major tournaments with Wimbledon the last of the majors to do so in 2007. The US Open was the first to start equal pay in 1973, but it was only 28 years later that the Australian Open decided to follow suit and then the French Open made the same move in 2006.

Despite pay parity in majors, women’s tennis players are paid considerably less as women only events on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour have much lower prize money than the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Tour events. Judy, a former Great Britain Fed Cup team captain, wants the top players to come together and take a stand to bring about change.

"I think it needs more of the top women players to push for change on the women's side of the game because change is always driven from the top,” Murray said speaking ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, as quoted on Sky Sports.

"So, if somebody ranked 60 or a Fed Cup captain from a lower zone like myself [calls for change], of course it will have some kind of impact, but it doesn't drive anything through.”

Judy has pointed to the men’s game where the top players namely Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are always speaking out with regards to the change they want to see in the game, be it about the prize money, the scheduling or the change in format of the Davis Cup.

The Serbian former world number one even campaigned for more prize money for the men as he believes the remuneration should be divided according to the tickets sold and interest generated. The trio also recently gave their backing for a change in format for the Davis Cup, after plans were proposed to change the format and make it a week-long event at the end of the year, rather than countries playing each other during the course of the season.

Judy wants Serena, who is just returning from 12-months on the side-lines after giving birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia, to use her standing in the game and bring about change in the women’s game.

"On the men's side, if you've got Andy and Rafa and Roger and Novak pushing for change, whether that's Davis Cup or better distribution of the profits from the grand slams, they're going to sit up and take notice. But we need top women to do the same thing,” the three-time Grand Slam winner’s mother explained.

“Serena, now that she's had a baby girl, I'm hoping as she comes towards the end of her career that she will use her voice to make things change for women."

"It's not all about equal prize money, it's about grassroots opportunities and helping the female game across the world get stronger,” Judy added.