Tennis - Who deserves the money??

So who really deserves the big bucks? The Australian Open is the only major tournament where both men and women are paid equally. Is this deserved? I'm interested to see what you all think on this.

I for a long time have thought that men definitely deserved more moula than their female conuterparts. Now i feel a little differently about this subject.

Lets get this straight. These tennis players are in a business. They are in the money making business. They are pros. Professional sports is all about the money generated from their players. For a long time women have been paid unequally. The reason for this is that men are typically better at sport than women. In other words - if you put Roger Fedorer on a court with Serena Williams, Roger would make her look ridiculous. However, if you look at this argument and apply it to say netball. Despite women being underpaid, they would still be paid much higher than a professional men's netball team. Why? Not because men are better than women at sport. The underlying argument of the last decade has been due to the length of matches. Women are only playing best of 3 set matches, yet men are playing 5 sets - so working harder for there money. So they should be paid per the length of match they play. But lets apply that to basketball. Men and women both play 48 minutes - should they be paid equally? Professional sports all comes down to the money generated by its players. If people are prepared to pay the amount for a ticket for women's games as they are a men's then they should be paid accordingly. The day women stop filling centre court is the day the argument makes sense. Secondly - despite women only playing 3 sets you could argue that they still face the same challenges as men in terms of a battle of endurance. Points are typically much longer in the women's game, as they don't have ir-returnable power on the serve or off ground strokes. Men's service games can last less than a minute, while women can typically struggle to hold their serve and grind it out on the baseline. A perfect example of this is the matches i saw at this year's open I went to two night sessions and both times the women's match lasted longer than the men's match. Roger completely dismantled his opponent in less than an hour and a half winning 6-3, 6-0, 6-0, while Dokic battled for nearly 2.5 hours in a tough fought 3 setter. A week earlier Sam Stozer was in another gruelling 2.5 hour match and then Rafer Nadal came on and towled up his opponent in 1.5 hours. Typically it was thought that the men's draw was a lot tougher, with players being equally skilled through the top 50 ranks, while women had 1-2 top players and the rest were just hoping to avoid these players to get the biggest pay check. But Fedorer seeded 2 completely destroyed the number 8 seed. Number 8!! At the end of the day it comes down to the money the players can generate back into the sport. Sure Fedorer is the most marketable person in the sport, but behind him all players, whether men or women, these days generate equal interest either through sex appeal (these days the men are generating more interest than the women used to), or through the quality of tennis match they play. Let me know where you stand.