Tennis Opinion: In the first instalment of a weekly column, Johnny Watterson looks at the issue of gender inequality in London SW19.

There will be many thinking that the Wimbledon committee would seem to know the cost of everything and the price of little. This year the cost is £30,000 (€43,000), the price another round of opprobrium for those who organise and run the biggest tennis event in the world. Wimbledon, obdurate and resistant to political and social change, is slowly turning old and crusty in front of our eyes.

Again, and after years of transparently thin arguments, the All England Club will remain the only Grand Slam organiser in tennis not to pay its men's and women's champions equal prize money. The £30,000 is the difference.

This year the French Open organisers at Roland Garros, in what may have been viewed as a shocking development in London, have joined the other two Grand Slam events, in Australia and the US, in granting financial parity.

Now, Wimbledon, the market leaders in many other aspects of tennis, find themselves outside looking in. But they must be right. Right?

For misogynists, yesterday's announcement may even be seen as well timed. For it was also the day the Federation Cup drew their pairings for the semi-finals, involving Belgium, Italy, USA and Spain, of the biggest women's team event in the world.

Justine Henin-Hardenne, Kim Klijsters, Lindsay Davenport, all of them Grand Slam champions, will have been greeted with Wimbledon's stiff upper lip as well as the cup draw.

They know that they are, again, officially unequal to Andy Roddick and Roger Federer and Mariusz Fyrstenberg. Who is Mariusz Fyrstenberg? Doesn't matter. He'll still get more money for the same labour.

Today is the day Ireland begin their Federation Cup Euro-African Group Two tournament in Turkey.

Teenager Rachel Dillon, who aspires to compete one day for Wimbledon cash, Yvonne Doyle, Ann-Marie Hogan and the 24 players from the six other nations represented in the tournament are expected to be grateful, not picky, that the All England Club's prize money for this year's men's winner will amount to £655,000 (€946,000), with the women's champion getting £625,000 (€903 ,000). The figures show a four per cent rise from last year.

The French Open organisers announced last month they would pay their men's and women's singles champions the same prize money: €940,000, though they were criticised by the WTA Tour for not applying equality throughout the draw.

Last week Billie Jean King, a six-times Wimbledon winner and a key figure in establishing the women's tennis tour in the 1970s, poured scorn on the argument that men get paid more because they play best-of-five sets, while women play best-of-three.

"That is their decision not to let us play three out of five sets," she said. "And how about everybody playing two out of three? That would be really helpful. Entertainers don't get paid by the hour. They get paid, period. If Elton John does a concert, it could last one hour or four hours. It's a done deal."

Larry Scott, chief executive of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), called the five-set argument a "convenient" one.

"Some years the women's TV ratings will be higher, some years the men's will be higher. Obviously it's a social and political statement being made," he said.

What few people understand at this stage in the development of the game is why the Wimbledon committee insist on adhering to a fossilised logic that makes them appear churlish. The money involved is trivial and is a non-issue. The tournament made £25 million in profit last year and this year the total prize money is £10.38 million, up 2.9 per cent. The men's doubles winners will each earn £220,690, a rise of one percent, the women getting £205,280.

But that's simply more of the cost. The price is a committee of gentlemen seen as foolishly out of touch with popular sentiment.