Women's tennis is having a moment

In yesterday’s second women’s semi-final, current world number one Simona Halep and former world number one Angelique Kerber, treated us to one of the matches of the tournament.

As one commentator aptly described it, it was a ‘furious and glorious’ match, played for the most part at a breakneck tempo, with a fervent, pulsating atmosphere as both players gave everything they had in the pursuit of a Grand Slam final.

Earlier, on the same court, another former world number one in Caroline Wozniacki survived a challenge from unseeded Belgian Elise Mertens to reach her first Australian Open final.

Women’s tennis has been criticised in recent years for a perceived lack of consistency and depth, brought on by the fact that, unlike the men’s competition, there has been no clear number one.

The players who have reached the number one ranking have often done so in the absence of a Grand Slam victory. This is unarguably true – indeed, since 2005 there have been 16 world number ones, and 19 different Grand Slam winners, as well as three instances in which first-time finalists have faced off against each other in Grand Slams.

There are also three active players – current number one Simona Halep, as well as Karolina Pliskova and Caroline Wozniacki – who have not won a Grand Slam. However, I’d argue that this makes a strong case for, rather than against, the depth that exists in the women’s draw.

(Tatiana / Flickr)

Take this year’s Australian Open semi-finals as an example. The two matches featured three women, in Elise Mertens, Halep and Kerber, who started the year with a 10-0 record before coming into the Australian Open, while Wozniacki began with a 9-1 record.

As a result, tomorrow night’s final will be the first time since 2005 that the two top seeds in the women’s draw have made it to the final at the Australian Open. The winner of tomorrow’s match will take the world number one ranking, showing how small are the current margins separating the top players.

Last year, two women won their first Grand Slam tournaments, both contesting their first major finals (Jelena Ostapenko at the French Open, and Sloane Stephens at the US Open). The fact that there are at least five or six women who seem capable of winning any given tournament is fantastic for the sport, and makes it more exciting for fans.

It’s hard to remember a time when there were players the calibre of Halep, Pliskova, Wozniacki, Agnieszka Radwanska, Elina Svitolina and Johanna Konta, to name a few, who have been consistently good players but have yet to win a Grand Slam.

Some might say that this inability to perform on the biggest stage is evidence that women’s tennis lacks up-and-coming champions, but I’d argue that, in many respects, it speaks to the fact that winning a major tournament is in some respects more difficult on the women’s side than on the men’s. This is so given the evenness of the competition (obviously, there’s the big difference that men play five sets and women play three, which is clearly an obstacle to men winning Grand Slam tournaments).

(Carine06 / Flickr)

Compare this to the men’s competition in the same period, where, since 2005, only two men outside of the ‘Big 5′ of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have won Grand Slam titles – Juan Martin del Potro, and Marin Cilic, both at the US Open.

In that time, the first and second-ranked players have featured in at least one Grand Slam final every year except 2010, and two first-time finalists have only played each other once, at the US Open in 2014, when Cilic defeated Kei Nishikori.

Perhaps the starkest difference between the two competitions is that, since 2005, there have only been four world number ones. Despite the fact that there are a group of up-and-coming male players who have posted excellent results over the past few years – think David Goffin, Alexander Zverev, Milos Raonic and Dominic Thiem – this has largely failed to translate to Grand Slams.

(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

There also seems to be less chance on a given day that this second rung of players will defeat the Big 5. Clearly, Wawrinka, Djokovic and Murray have recently been hampered by injury, which obviously changes the equation; and I expect that, over the next few years, the men’s competition will become more even as the Big 5 either start to retire or deal with more injury issues.

However, while there’ve been some upsets at the Australian Open over the past few years, including Denis Istomin’s defeat of Djokovic in the second round last year, and qualifier Tennys Sandgren’s win over Dominic Thiem in this year’s quarter-finals, there never seems to be the same excitement and genuine possibility that a lower-ranked player will beat one of the top contenders.

In the women’s draw, on any given day, anyone ranked in the top 70 has a genuine chance to beat a top-10 player; indeed, several players currently ranked outside the top 30 have been ranked inside it before, which can’t be said of the men’s draw.

On Saturday night, we’ll have the third first-time Grand Slam champion in the last five majors. Women’s tennis is having a moment. Let’s hope it lasts for a few more years yet.