Lower nets, lighter balls would boost women’s tennis

Israeli researchers examining tennis tournament scores have suggested that lowering the nets in games and making the balls lighter would increase competitiveness in women’s matches.

“Lowering court nets and playing with lighter tennis balls to accommodate physiological differences would help make women’s matches more competitive, with scores closer to the men’s,” Mosi Rosenboim, an Israeli researcher from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba and one of the conductors of the study, told the Daily Mail.

“It is important to note that the current disparity is not related to competitive drive. It is usually attributed to differences in strength and speed, particularly when serving.”

According to the study, which was published in the Journal of Sports Economics in the May 2016 edition and focused on the 24 top men’s and 23 top women’s singles tournaments of the 2010 season, men’s tennis sets tended to be much closer, or “tighter,” than women’s sets.

“While a men’s set is typically a duel of ace serves, resulting in back-and-forth game wins, women break more serves, which results in shorter sets,” Rosenboim said.

But when the researchers controlled for physical characteristics, the discrepancy in scores based on gender all but disappeared, according to the Daily Mail.

“The set-level analysis indicates that physical power, not competitiveness, is responsible for the different number of games per set,” said another of the study’s authors, Offer Moshe Shapir of New York University in Shanghai. “Level of competitiveness is one of the most important factors in the sports industry, where uncertain outcomes generate more interest from fans and higher ticket sales,” he added.

“If no changes are made, playing on the same court makes men’s and women’s tennis a completely different game,” Rosenboim concluded.