Novak Djokovic presses beast button and gets equality debate wrong

The first point that needs to be made about Ray Moore and female tennis players is that they are worth a good deal more than he is.

The second is that Novak Djokovic, the best player in the world, men's or women's, should, as the Australians put it so eloquently, "pull his head in".

The world No1, shortly after marmalising poor Milos Raonic in the Indian Wells final with a bagel flourish, couldn't quite get his diplomacy right on the most sensitive of issues: equal pay and recognition.

He gently chided Moore, the tournament's wretched chief executive, for saying women should "get down on their knees" and thank Roger Federer for making tennis so popular and, by inference, making them richer than they might otherwise have been.

But Djokovic, an articulate and intelligent man, then wrecked his performance with a parting shot: men should get paid even more now because their ratings are better than the women’s game. It was last-ball tennis he could have done without. The Serb, who goes out of his way to charm tennis writers by handing out chocolates at press conferences, got this horribly wrong.

Yet he no doubt believes it. Djokovic, for all his sophistication and all-embracing cosmopolitan awareness of issues beyond his own sport – such as the floods that caused such havoc in his homeland a couple of years ago – has a beast button.

He presses that button under pressure in big finals, the fire entering his nostrils, the tendons and muscles of his extraordinary arms and legs stretched to breaking point as he finds something almost supernatural to win from impossible positions. He did it to the sainted Federer in two semi-finals in New York; he did it to Rafael Nadal in a memorable final in Melbourne.

There are few sights more glorious in tennis than Djokovic finding that inner beast, as he rips his shirt open to reveal a hard-muscled machine of frightening intensity.

And then, after regathering his composure, he slips back into diplomatic mode, the quietly spoken leader of his sport, an ambassador for respect and integrity. “Our sport”, he makes sure to always call it. And there is no reason to doubt he cares.

But he is as quick on his feet away from the court as he is on it. When he was reminded at the Australian Open this year about long-ago stories of having been approached by match-fixers in Moscow (and seeing them off), he settled the accusers down with the deftness of a lawyer. He is an impressive individual in many ways.

But, in almost accidentally letting his inner beast talk over the top of the mannered diplomat, Djokovic blew it. He joined the appalling Mr Moore in the dock. He could have said nothing, but he gave the chief executive of the putative “fifth major” undeserved succour.

Moore is the villain du jour, Djokovic his unwitting patron.

Are these widely held views in the game? On the basis of experience, no. These are not things that people and players routinely discuss. Nick Kyrgios, Ernests Gulbis and a few other men have dragged knuckles over these issues in the past and been dismissed as either juvenile or flippant. But they do the reflect an old divide in a sport where something as mundane as competing for practice courts causes friction at mixed tournaments.

There is also the “normal” societal thing, the law of averages and all that – which is never much of a defence. There will always be “a few”, of course, but Djokovic’s remarks are disturbing, especially as they come sugar-coated.

Tennis is a curious sport inasmuch as the men’s and women’s versions are obviously different and there have been ongoing discussions in recent years about women playing five-set rather than three-set matches in the slams, which is a debate worth having.

But it has been suddenly clouded. There is no justice in saying women should be paid less because they play less. The intensity, effort and excellence they bring to big matches, especially dramatic finals such as the one at the Australian Open this year between Serena Williams and Angelique Kerber, is worth every penny they get from it.

But I’m not sure Williams, for instance, would see a lot of sense in having to win the best of five sets against some of the lesser opponents she meets in the early rounds of majors. However, there is a good argument to say five sets from the quarter-finals onwards, say, makes good competitive sense.

That, though, is a sporting argument, not financial, and it is one that is erroneously produced in circumstances such as those that unravelled in Indian Wells at the weekend.

“We shouldn’t have to drop to our knees,” is how Williams put it. This is not an issue that the likes of a man in a suit in the California desert should have provenance over. Who is Ray Moore, anyway?

Without having an inkling about his political affiliations, it is fair to say he would not have sounded out of place at a Donald Trump rally.

Is there more sexism in tennis than other sports, or society in general? Well, it depends which sport and which society. In rugby union, who would have thought the coming out of Alfie Thomas and Nigel Owens would have been so unquestioningly accepted and applauded?

For tennis, Andy Murray has long been a voice of reason on the subject of equality and not solely because he employs Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. So there is hope. But not a lot in Indian Wells today.

(Guardian service)