McEnroe on guard as gender pay row returns at Wimbledon

London: After it was revealed he earned 10 times more than Martina Navratilova for their BBC work last year, John McEnroe insisted it was not a comparable situation to players’ prize money.

“The way you presented that, it seemed like a trick question,” he says, smiling weakly. “The mature man that I am at this stage, the knowledgeable man I am about the way things can be presented, leads me to believe that it’s best if I stay out of this particular issue and let the BBC handle it right now.”

The players, of course, will receive the same prize money when this year’s Wimbledon begins on Monday. The provision of equal pay by the All England Club in 2007 — the last grand slam event to do so — was the culmination of a decades-long fight by the Women’s Tennis Association founder, Billie Jean King, champions such as Chris Evert and Navratilova herself, and, lately, Serena and Venus Williams.

Navratilova’s reaction when she discovered the discrepancy in the commentary box suggested she did not agree the situation was so different. In March in an interview for Panorama: Britain’s Equal Pay Scandal, she revealed she was paid only 15,000 pounds at Wimbledon and accused the BBC of valuing male voices over female ones.

McEnroe supports the case for Williams to be seeded at Wimbledon — and it only underlines the perversity of his stance on equal pay.

“If you work at a magazine or a paper and there’s a woman and man you’re going to get paid based on the job that you do, in the opinion of the paper. Right? And, if the girl does the better job, she should get more money. That’s what it boils down to.

“As far as the other stuff? I don’t know. I don’t know what she gets and she doesn’t know what I get and I don’t know what most people get. I’ve not spoken to her — but we’re not in the same place that often. It doesn’t come up.”

Asked if would he be doing the same job this year — droll asides during and after match commentary — McEnroe says: “I believe so. That’s up to the BBC. But I’ve been fortunate that over at least 15 years it has given me the opportunity to present myself in a different way. At least people see me in a slightly different light than they saw me on the court. I think it’s been mutually beneficial.”

McEnroe, by general consensus, has been a breath of fresh air in the BBC commentary box — but so, too, has Navratilova. Her frankness and depth of knowledge bring something well suited to television.

What McEnroe does bring to the job is fearlessness. Such is his status and personality, he gets away with a lot that some others might not — “constructive criticism” is how he describes it.

— Guardian News & Media Limited, 2018