Association Tennis Professionals
Can women play on the ATP tour?
Association of Tennis Professionals
A bit of clarification: first of all, the man that the Williams sisters lost to was ranked 205 at the time. The Williams sisters had been claiming to the media that they could beat any professional male outside of the top 100 men in the world. Apparently, after being smoked by an aging player (who prepared for his match by downing a few beers, among other things), they changed their song and started claiming being able to beat any male outside of the top 350 in the world.
And as for the Billy Jean King match, it should be noted that the match pitted King against a 55 year old man. Bobby Riggs wasn’t one of the top men’s players in the world anymore–he wasn’t even a professional player, anymore. His glory days where in the 1930s and 40s, not in the 70s when the Battle of the Sexes took place.
But to answer your question directly, no. The ATP Tour is for men’s tennis, while the WTA is for women. Maybe your question is more ‘Can women physically compete with men’ rather than a question of rules.
In order to better understand the differences between women’s and men’s tennis, go to your closest D1 university and watch the men’s and the women’s teams play. You’ll notice a few differences, among which: the men are able to produce more velocity on the ball from more positions (i.e., in the men’s game defenders can turn into attackers from virtually anywhere), the serves are all bigger, and their movement is usually better.
Another anecdote to put things in perspective: when I was a junior player in a small city, there was a woman on the WTA tour from our city. One day she played one of my 16 year old friends in a training match. He was a good player–ranked among the top 5 in the state for his age, and probably among the top 100 to 50 in the region–but he almost beat her and lost 5-7 or 4-6, something like that.
I’m afraid that the gap is still too big between the top men and the top women in the world.
I hope that helps.
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