Women Could Handle 5 Sets

Diana Nyad might not be the person you want to tell that the top female athletes in tennis lack the endurance to play five sets, as a friend once found out. The long-distance swimmer elaborates on her response in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, calling out "the unsubtle message of professional tennis" that women "don't have what it takes" to play best of five—as men do. As it is, women's matches can be "quick and seemingly effortless," Nyad writes. Aryna Sabalenka defeated Amanda Anisimova in straight sets in Saturday's US Open final, a match that lasted all of 1 hour, 34 minutes, per the Athletic; men's matches regularly take five hours. Nyad wants to see women, like men, "fight to that last, gutsy fifth-set retrieval of a deft drop shot."

Nyad recalls men's five-set matches that exhilarate and exhaust players and fans, such as the 2012 Australian Open final that left Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal unable to remain standing through the trophy presentation. "We took the last drop of energy that we had from our bodies," Djokovic said. That's what players, and fans, are missing now on the women's side, Nyad writes. But she stops short of voting for a longer format for women across the board. For one, Nyad says, the mismatches common in early rounds would be tough to watch at three or four sets. "A better solution would be for men and women to both play best two of three in the early rounds," she says, "then play three of five in the quarters, semis and finals." Like men, she adds, "women deserve to prove themselves gladiators." The full piece can be found here.