Tennis: Braasch, Williams sisters and the battle of the sexes in Dubai

DThe cat smoked a cigarette while changing sides. It’s hard to imagine today, but it really happened when Karsten Braasch played the most legendary match of his career. It took place at the Australian Open in 1998, on Court 12. The then 31-year-old German from Marl, who had previously been number 38 in the world rankings and had his best days behind him, had picked up the gauntlet that two aspiring tennis prodigies had thrown at him.

The Williams sisters Serena, 16, and Venus, 17, had said they could beat men in the top 200. So it came about that Braasch, a left-handed player with a jackknife serve who was nicknamed Cat because of his smooth movements, competed against the Americans. “My training preparation included a leisurely round of golf in the morning, followed by some cycling. I showed up on the course suitably relaxed,” is how Braasch later described it. That didn’t stop him, the world number 203, from sweeping away Serena 6:1 and Venus 6:2.

Since then, Braasch has made a name for himself internationally. The Williams Sisters should have won no fewer than 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them. On closer inspection, Braasch’s two set wins were less spectacular, but simply reflected the power imbalance between men and women in tennis. This was the case before, when the first “Battle of Sexes” took place in the early 1970s, with Margaret Court, Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, who was almost twice her age. And this is how the unequal relationship still looks today. That’s why the “Battle of Sexes” scheduled for this Sunday in Dubai between the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka and the Australian Nick Kyrgios is even more of a mock duel than before, a tennis mirage – although one cannot deny the match’s value.

“I think even a junior would have beaten me when I was number one,” admits Garbiñe Muguruza

When Court (lost to Riggs) and King (won to Riggs) competed against a man, it was a necessary contribution to the fight for equal rights for women in sports. Shortly afterwards, the US Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to introduce equal prize money for women and men. The women’s tour is a success story, even if it lags behind the men’s tour economically. Since then, King has been considered an icon of the women’s movement. But it is also a fact that men and women fight in different weight classes, just like in boxing. What Braasch said still applies. Men have more strength; they hit harder and with more spin; reach balls that women can’t reach. The biological requirements are what they are, in tennis that means: power beats endurance. “I think even a junior would have beaten me when I was number one,” recently admitted Spaniard Garbiñe Muguruza, who is no longer active.

One can at least give the organizer credit for not trying to give this match any deeper meaning; Basically it’s not about the duel between man and woman. “We also want to cause unrest, in a positive sense,” Stuart Duguid once explained in an SZ interview about the concept of his agency Evolve, which he founded in 2022 with the player Naomi Osaka (Osaka has since left.) The Scot is doing nothing else now. A bit of a ruckus. For his PR campaign, he enlists his most prominent clients, the lively Sabalenka and Kasper Kyrgios, who has fallen in the world rankings, who could decide among themselves who will win and how. You’re in the family. The rules of the game reveal that everyone is aware of the inequality of opportunity. The field of world number one is nine percent smaller, everyone only has one serve. Nevertheless, the industry is looking forward to Dubai, and Duguid’s marketing calculation for players and sponsors is already paying off. Much ado about nothing, as Shakespeare already knew, also works.