Wimbledon women's final: Venus Williams, Lindsay Davenport, and Grand Slam mythology

New York Times

10 hours ago

THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — Twenty years ago this week, Venus Williams defeated Lindsay Davenport in one of the most dramatic Wimbledon finals in history.
Davenport served for the match in the second set and had a championship point in the third, but Williams won an all-American classic 4-6, 7-6(4), 9-7, in two hours and 45 minutes. It remains the longest ever Wimbledon women's final, and one of the greatest Grand Slam finals of all time.
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After Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner's epic French Open final last month, tennis conversation turned to that very topic. Some Wimbledon finals made the cut: the 1980 men's version between Björn Borg and John McEnroe; the 2008 equivalent between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Even Goran Ivanišević's win over Patrick Rafter in the tournament's 2001 edition. What of Steffi Graf vs. Monica Seles at the 1992 French Open? Or the 2014 French Open final between Maria Sharapova and Simona Halep?
Men's Grand Slam finals, which are best of five sets, afford more time and more space in which to unfold into epic dimensions. A sport with legitimate claim to have greater equality than most still has a chasm between its men's and women's events, which are best of three sets, on its biggest stages, at which the format acts as a cap on not just how long a women's match can go, but how deeply it can bury its way into the collective consciousness.
Quality does not always equal quantity. As tennis matches generally tend to go on longer, and some five-setters can become dull for long stretches, the best-of-three version has benefits. That Sinner-Alcaraz final in Paris was the exception rather than the rule. But in wider culture, the myth-making of five-set tennis is the more potent, which can limit the exposure given to women's tennis on a purely quantitative basis. And if women's matches spend less time on television screens than men's matches, especially at the climaxes of the biggest events in the sport, then the men's game necessarily receives more exposure.
Making both men's and women's singles best-of-three for the first four rounds and then best-of-five for the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals at the four majors is one solution.
Venus Williams had spent the day before that 2005 final in meetings with Wimbledon officials, discussing prize money inequality. That year, the tournament's men's singles champion, Federer, won £630,000 ($1.1 million in 2005) while Williams got £600,000 ($1.05 million). Her final against Davenport could not have offered a better illustration of why the disparity was so unfair. Two years later, Wimbledon finally joined the other three Grand Slams in awarding equal prize money.
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Davenport, now 49, remembers that final as one of very few matches in her career in which she played really well but ended up losing. She was the top seed at the tournament, and had already won the U.S. Open in 1998, Wimbledon in 1999 and the Australian Open in 2000, but she fell just short that day against Williams, who won her third of five Wimbledon titles and finished on seven majors overall.
The backhand winner that she smacked down the line to save Davenport's championship point underlined why she is such a legend of the sport, and the match underlined how the two players, plus contemporaries such as Venus' sister Serena Williams and Jennifer Capriati, had transformed women's tennis with the power and precision of their hitting.
'It was the toughest loss of my career,' Davenport, who is covering this year's Wimbledon as an analyst for Tennis Channel, said in a phone interview this week. 'Though I spoke about this once with Andy Roddick (a fellow American who lost in the men's final of the London event three times) and he looked at me and said, 'Yeah, at least you have a Wimbledon title'.'
That it was an incredible match makes it 'much harder,' Davenport said during an interview in Paris last month.
'You remember those,' she said. 'Sometimes it's almost easier to lose badly. Because you're like, 'Man, that wasn't my day'. That was my day, and I still couldn't win. That's a little harder to reconcile in your mind.'
Davenport also has some experience in best-of-five. She played two matches in the longer format, because the final of the WTA Tour Finals used it between 1984 and 1998. Davenport lost 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 to Gabriela Sabatini in 1994, and 7-5, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 to Martina Hingis four years later, in the last best-of-five WTA Tour match to date.
'It was interesting,' she said this week. 'It was very different, and I was outspoken that I didn't think formats should change in the middle of a tournament. It was a little bit hard to manage, and without the day off before it was a bit complicated.
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'People talk about changing the format from the quarters on [at Grand Slams]. I'm just not a believer in changing a format in the same tournament. You either go all-in or you don't go in.'
The possibility of such mid-event changes being disruptive is balanced by the fact that match times can undulate wildly even within the same format, and players are just expected to adapt. Male players also have to jump from best-of-three to best-of-five in the space of a few days if they had a tournament the week before a Grand Slam.
Davenport is sympathetic to best-of-five giving women's tennis a more even platform, but fears that critics of women's tennis would still dig up something to find fault with. She said she'd be interested in experiments, but added that it would have to be tested elsewhere first before it is trialled at a major.
There's no suggestion at this point that any of the four Grand Slams is giving it serious consideration.
Until 1984, the 1,500 metres was the longest distance available to women at the Olympic Games. Ball girls weren't allowed at Wimbledon until 1977, and it took eight more years for the tournament to let them work matches on Centre Court. From the vantage point of 2025, this appears as absurd as suggesting that women's soccer matches should be 70 minutes instead of 90, the same as in the men's game.
In tennis, the most popular route toward format equality is for men to join the women in playing best-of-three. Men's matches at Wimbledon averaged two hours and 45 minutes across last year's tournament, a 22 percent increase from two hours and 15 minutes in 2013, which is leading to more physical and mental strain on average, but switching to best-of-three would also eradicate the five-set myth-making that has made matches such as last month's French Open final transcend tennis entirely.
At this year's Wimbledon, leading WTA players have not been enthusiastic about the idea of going to best-of-five.
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Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1, said in a news conference last week, 'I think probably physically I'm one of the strongest ones, so maybe it would benefit me. But I think I'm not ready to play five sets. I think we're not ready for this amount of tennis. I think it would increase the amount of injuries, so I think this is not something I would consider. I'll let this (be a) thing for guys to handle.'
Sabalenka had played a dramatic final of her own against Coco Gauff at Roland Garros the day before the Sinner and Alcaraz epic, and took a dry approach to any possible envy of the hype created by best-of-five matches. 'I'm not really jealous to stay there for five hours as a player,' she said. 'I don't know how many days they needed to recover after that crazy match.'
Former world No. 1 Iga Świątek, who will compete in this year's Wimbledon women's final today (Saturday) against Amanda Anisimova, agreed and said, with a smile, that she 'was glad' not to be competing in a final like that. 'I think I would be good at it because I always feel like physically I can survive more and I would have more time sometimes to problem solve,' she said of best-of-five.
Many women's players backed their athleticism if they had to move to the longer format, but the idea of actually having to play more tennis generally did not appeal. Gauff fitted this paradigm: 'I think it would favor me, just from a physicality standpoint. But I do think it would be a big change for the tour. I think it would be fine just keeping it like how it is.'
Jessica Pegula, the American world No. 3, said that top players like her would gain an advantage from their opponents needing three sets to beat them, rather than two.
'Not physically, obviously, but I think it always is going to cater to the better player in the long run if you're playing three out of five,' she said, after a first-round loss to a redlining Elisabetta Cocciaretto in straight sets at Wimbledon: the kind of match in which an underdog might not be able to maintain a peak for an extra set.
'I think you'd see a lot more upsets of top players if men played two out of three in the slams. It's a lot harder when you don't have that much time. You get down one break, especially for the men, and you're like, 'Oh, gosh, I'm kind of done. I need some luck. I need someone to choke a little bit.'
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'(With) Three out of five, you have way more time to turn things around.'
Pegula, however, added that format equity should come from men playing best-of-three.
'For me, it's too long,' she said of best-of-five. 'I lose interest watching the matches. I think they're incredible matches and incredible physically and mentally. But I'm like, 'Do we really need that?'. I mean, some people love it. I will not watch a full five-hour match. How are they holding their attention for five hours? I don't know. Just not my thing.'
Madison Keys, the Australian Open women's champion who played some extraordinary three-setters during her triumphant run in Melbourne at the start of the year, was even more emphatic.
'Why would I want to do that?,' the American asked, with a smile, about playing five sets. She didn't watch that men's French Open final and think how amazing it would be to be part of something like it, she added.
'Did you see how tired they were at the end? Five-set matches can go five hours. That's crazy,' Keys said. 'No, you watch women's matches, there have been so many three-set matches that have been epic, amazing and have so much drama. My match today (in the Wimbledon first round against Elena-Gabriela Ruse) was full of drama. I don't need another two sets of that.'
Keys also believes that comparing women's and men's tennis is futile — and even damaging — because they 'are different sports'.
'I think when you constantly try to compare them to each other, you're doing a disservice to both. So I don't think that you compare an epic three-setter women's match to an epic five-setter men's match. I think those are two separate things. That's my view at least. I've never looked at an epic three-set women's match and been like, 'Man, if they only went two more sets to compete against the men',' she said.
Japan's four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka also backed herself in five-set tennis, but said that format inequity 'might be one of the most nitpicky things' about equality and women's tennis at large.
Emma Navarro, the American world No. 10, was the only player who expressed much enthusiasm for playing best of five.
'I would be curious to see how the tour would hold up playing five sets. Yeah, I think it would be kind of fun,' she said. 'Sinner and Alcaraz (in the French Open final), it was an insane display of endurance and, yeah, fitness level. I would be curious to see how the ladies would handle it.'
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For active players, their own interests tend to trump the bigger picture, and so it's understandable that for most women, the idea of adding even more physical and mental duress to an already packed schedule is not massively appealing.
As long as the different formats are in place, there will be opportunities to undervalue women's tennis compared to men's.
Wimbledon debentures provide a 'premium seat' on Centre Court or No. 1 Court for the duration of the tournament, for five editions of the tournament, so 70 days of tennis in total. Centre Court debentures for 2026 to 2030 inclusive were issued at £116,000 ($156,462 at the current rate). The tickets for individual days can be transferred or resold.
In a letter sent to Wimbledon debenture holders on the eve of this year's tournament, the recommended sell-on price for a pair of men's final tickets was £16,000. A pair of women's final tickets was £4,000 — a quarter of the price.
While this might not be a concern to most players, it contributes to a climate where women's tennis can be continually undervalued on the grounds of guaranteed quantity, even when its quality regularly outstrips men's matches. The women's final at the Australian Open between Keys and Sabalenka was spectacular, immeasurably more interesting than Sinner's 6-3, 7-6, 6-3 dismantling of Alexander Zverev the following day, but the best-of-five-set format gives the men's final the space to be transcendent.
And so to today's final between Świątek and Anisimova, which could be anything from one-sided to sensational. If it is spectacular, matching the heights of possibly the best ever between Williams and Davenport 20 years ago, tennis and sporting culture will meet with a built-in limit on how memorable it can be.
In the future, that might be looked back on as absurd as not letting women run the longer distances at the Olympics.