User:Jgfell/Women's Tennis Association

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The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is the principal organizing body of women's professional tennis. It governs the WTA Tour which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women and was founded to create a better future for women's tennis. The WTA's corporate headquarters is in St. Petersburg, Florida, with its European headquarters in London and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing.

The Women's Tennis Association was founded in June 1973 by Billie Jean King, and traces its origins to the inaugural Virginia Slims tournament, arranged by Gladys Heldman, sponsored by Joe Cullman, CEO of Philip Morris, and held on 23 September 1970 at the Houston Racquet Club in Houston, Texas. Rosie Casals won this first event.

When the Women's Tennis Association was founded, Billie Jean King was one of nine players that comprised the WTA, also referred to as the Original 9, that included Julie Heldman, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Judy Dalton, Kristy Pigeon, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kerry Melville Reid, Nancy Richey, and Rosie Casals. Today, the WTA has more than 2,500 players from nearly 100 countries competing for $146 million in prize money.

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The Open Era, in which professional players were allowed to compete alongside amateurs, began in 1968. Billie Jean King was a high ranking tennis player in the late 1960s who won several titles and was interviewed in the media. The first Open Tournament was the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth. At the first Open Wimbledon, the prize fund difference was 2.5:1 in favor of men. King won £750 for taking the title, while Rod Laver won £2,000. The total purses of both competitions were £14,800 for men and £5,680 for women. Confusion also reigned as no one knew how many Open Tournaments there were supposed to be. The tournaments that did not want to provide prize money eventually faded out of the calendar, including the US Eastern Grass Court circuit with stops at Merion Cricket Club and Essex county club.

There were two professional tennis circuits in existence at the start of the Open Era: World Championship Tennis (WCT), which was for men only, and the National Tennis League (NTL). Ann Jones, Rosie Casals, Françoise Dürr, and Billie Jean King joined NTL. King was paid $40,000 a year, Jones was paid $25,000, and Casals and Durr were paid $20,000 each. The group played established tournaments, such as the US Open and Wimbledon. But the group also organised their own tournaments, playing in the South of France for two months. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) then imposed several sanctions on the group: the women were not allowed to play in the Wightman Cup in 1968 and 1969 and the USLTA refused to include Casals and King in their rankings for those years.

Prize money was not offered to woman tennis players until 1968. By the 1970s the pay differential had increased. King said "Promoters were making more money than women. Male tennis players were making more money. Everybody was making more money except the women". In 1969, ratios of 5:1 in terms of pay between men and women were common at smaller tournaments. By 1970 these figures had increased to up to 12:1.

It was the determination of Billie Jean King to fight for equal rights for woman. She wanted to provide a tour where any girl from any nationality would have an opportunity to play. Not only could they play but they would be compensated. The tennis court became the battle ground for Billie to push for equal rights. “When Billie Jean King won the Italian Open in 1970, her prize was $600. Her male counterpart, Ilie Nastase, was awarded $3,500, nearly six times that. In 1970 Margaret Court won the Grand Slam and received only a $15,000 bonus, whereas the men could achieve up to $1 million. Indeed, as the ‘70s got underway, the pay gap between men and women in tennis began to widen considerably. As King and Cynthia Starr wrote in their book, “We Have Come a Long Way,” in 1988, “The women were being squeezed financially because we had no control in a male-dominated sport. Men owned, ran and promoted the tournaments, and because many of them were former players themselves, their sympathies lay with the male players, who argued vociferously that most of the money should be theirs.” The low point in women's pay inequality came before the US Open in 1970. The Pacific Southwest Championships directed by Jack Kramer, had announced a 12:1 ratio in the prize money difference between what males and females would win.

This tournament provoked the top 9 woman tennis players to take a stand for equality. These woman became known as the Original 9. They did not play in the Los Angeles tournament and instead wanted to create their own tennis tournament. Several female players contacted Gladys Heldman, publisher of World Tennis Magazine, and stated that they wanted to boycott the event. Although Heldman advised against it, she did help them put together their own tournament in Houston which would not take place until after the US Open. The 1970 Houston Women's Invitation for nine women players was formed. Heldman was friends with Joseph Cullman, CEO and chairman of Phillip Morris, who secured the new tournament. The tournament was a success and the women found footing, "so, at the bidding of the Original 9, Heldman – who had secured backing from Philip Morris’s Virginia Slims cigarette brand for her Houston Invitational – went back to her friend, Philip Morris chairman Joe Cullman III, to see if the company would support a circuit of some kind. Delighted by the publicity splash from Houston, Cullman was only too keen to give the women what they needed: financial backing, to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars, and the Virginia Slims name as title sponsor for a circuit in 1971.”

The International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) began dropping several women's competitions from the tournaments it presided over. For example, in 1970, the ILTF sanctioned 15 men-only tournaments, all of which had previously been combined events. The Virginia Slims Circuit, which would later absorb the ILTF's Women's Grand Prix circuit, and eventually become the WTA Tour. The circuit was composed of 19 tournaments, all based in the United States (one in Puerto Rico), and prize money totaled $309,100.

In 1973 the US Open tennis tournament awarded the same prize money for women as the men but not until 2001 did another grand slam tournament follow the lead. The Australian Open in 2001, The French Open in 2006 and Wimbledon Championships in 2007 finally sought equal prize money.

The momentum that began in the 70’s blossomed into the ‘80s. By solidifying television contracts to broadcast tournaments allowed tennis to come into everyone’s home. You didn’t need a ticket to see the spectacle of players that represented countries around the global. The sport became increasingly more popular as coverage spread. “The '80s energized the popularity base, taking tennis out of country clubs and landed estates into public parks and arenas. It became a sport, in contrast to an amenable pastime.”

“From those first steps in Houston in 1970 to the current WTA Tour, with tournaments in 33 countries and total prize money of $139 million (in 2018); from a prize pot 10 times lower than the men at the Grand Slams in 1970 to parity in 2007 and ever since, women’s tennis has become (almost) the equal of its male counterpart. And they did it themselves, which also explains why their governance is still independent today.”