Interesting perpective Shankman.
I'm not sure if any one entity is responsible for the degeneration of the WTA but that's a start!
from what i recollect, some of the american commentators, past women's tennis greats like chris evert and few tennis bodies around the world were strongly in favour of equal prize money and were setting the media on fire with their "revolution"........sharapova, williams sisters, jelena jankovic, ivanovic and few others were very vocal, b**ching and crying at almost every tournament in 2006.......
the arguments from those who opposed this idea were always surrounding the slams because the non-slam tournaments had best of 3 sets for men and women.......
french open and wimbledon refused the idea straightaway and very rightly.......in fact french open remained stubborn over the issue and was the only slam which paid unequal prizemoney even in 2007.......only the men's and women's winners were paid equal checks while everything else remained the same as old with women getting half of what men got.......i think sharapova or somebody b**ched about it very passionately.......
as a result of that, wimbledon authorities pissed their pants and joined the USO and australian open as the third tournament to distribute equal prize money from 2007 onwards.......
if not for a few ridiculous voices and pressure from media, this issue would never have been there.......now it's not possible to go back to unequal prizemoney no matter how muggy the WTA is.......if ITF takes that bold step, they would be branded sexist forever in the entire sporting world 80% of which knows nothing about tennis.......
