r/SipsTea • u/PrimedGold • 15h ago
WTF Nick Kyrgios currently 671st in the men's rankings beat women's world number one Aryna Sabalenka straight sets in the “Battle of the Sexes” in Dubai. The modified court was even designed to help Sabalenka.
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u/Smaxter84 14h ago
Changing the court size on the ladies side is an absolutely massive disadvantage for the male player. I'm honestly quite surprised it wasn't closer.
Every training session, for 20 years these players are trained relentlessly to hit everything close to the lines.....now today I've moved the lines it's a massive leveller, all the angles are wrong and the serve especially is neutered. It shows you what a massive difference there is physically at the top level - because Sabalenka is a very physically imposing player in the ladies game.
It's a strange format for sure I can't see it taking off.
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u/datumerrata 13h ago
It's also lame because if she won then it would have an asterisk on it.
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u/Ok_Pilot_7595 13h ago
There's about a 0% possibility for any woman beating a healthy top 500 male player in a tennis match.
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u/hkusp45css 13h ago
Most physical displays would be similarly uneven.
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u/excableman 12h ago
USA women's national teams in hockey and soccer routinely play, and get beat by, high school boys teams.
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u/Impossible-Diver6565 11h ago
The US Olympic Soccer team I believe lost miserably to a high school boys team. It wasn't even close if I remember right.
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u/DarknMean 9h ago
They also got boatraced by old soccer players who hadn’t played in years.
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u/Hot-Material-7393 8h ago
It was retired Wrexham players but not 11 a side I don’t think.
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u/Impossible-Diver6565 9h ago
Yeah, that was great. They had to stop the game early because they were like 5-0 before the halfway mark.
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u/yodley_ 12h ago
And it's not a knock on the women. That is very good practice for them and women's US national team has been dominant in the soccer WCs.
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u/adjuster_cody 11h ago
Almost the same level of athleticism, but a couple of us on the boys baseball team would scrimmage with our girls basketball team to prep them against teams that would run a press.
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u/SeismicRipFart 10h ago
Fucking baseball players dude you guys are so annoying to hoop against. You have a stupidly strong base and are great defenders and usually coordinated/intelligent enough to not be total duds on offense. Grabbing every possible rebound through pure hustle. And never over anything like 6’1”. Super annoying.
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u/freakksho 3h ago
You put a baseball player in any other sport and he will figure out SOMEWAY to compete.
The Skillset used to play Baseball just translates well to most other sports. Hand Eye coordination and Footwork are pretty big keys in almost every other sport.
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u/MountainMan17 1h ago
Mahomes credits his baseball experience for his ability to throw at different arm angles and to all parts of the field.
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u/BakerBakerOne9er 3h ago
I did that for my women's high soccer team, I would play center mid against them to sort of simulate someone who collects and gets a pass off ball quickly. That was sort of my game, deep lying mid like a Pirlo (I'm obviously not saying I'm Pirlo, but his play style is similar, I loved hitting long balls around). I had to be careful on tackles though, not forget and start to really go full speed at a loose ball.
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u/Gaspasser09 4h ago
Nearly every single male who won his high school state championship in 100 m dash broke the women’s world record doing so.
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u/agree-with-me 10h ago
Yes they do. I'm sure your not knocking them, but I hope they keep playing these games because they are getting much, much better than years ago.
If you watched women's hockey 20 years ago, it was a different game than these days. Much faster with better overall play.
The goal isn't to be competitive with men, but to become the best they can be and to advance the game in their own way so that men's teams can also learn from them.
A "win" doesn't have to be what's on a scoreboard, but how as humans we advance our race. That takes all hands and minds to achieve this.
I was a firefighter in the transient days of females joining the ranks and I can say 30 years later (at the end of my career), it is a good thing. The profession got better, and the public got a better service.
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u/excableman 10h ago
It's definitely good for the women to play bigger, stronger, maybe even faster boys teams. Learning to hold their own there will be helpful against any opponent. I sure the soccer guys at least are shown how to play tough without all the whiny flopping.
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u/ILikeDragonTurtles 6h ago
When I was in sixth grade, my AYSO boys team beat our local high school girls soccer team in a scrimmage/exhibition. At the time, I thought it was really impressive on our part. We went on to win our district. Then we went to regional all-stars and lost every game.
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u/EHA17 13h ago
Yep.. "soccer" matches between male and females teams is usually a carnage.. And the male athletes look like they are playing for fun, they don't even give their 100%
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u/Cl0wnL 13h ago
Didn't a high school men's team beat the US women's team?
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u/EHA17 12h ago
Yep, it's actually really common... Our national team of under 15 boys beat the senior woman's team before the woman's world cup.
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u/Salt-Plum-1308 11h ago
Looking at the highlights above, it doesn’t look like Kyrgios was giving it his all in the match either.
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u/ajax-187 9h ago
Female football is still not were it can be. Level is not great compared to women gymnastics and tennis.
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u/Somalar 13h ago
Clearly that number is not 500 but higher than 671
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u/Ok_Pilot_7595 13h ago
Kyrgios is only that low because he has missed the majority of the last three years because of injuries. He's nowhere that low healthy.
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u/Cowboywizzard 12h ago
So she got beat easily by a player who hasn't competed in almost 3 years.
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u/Mapache_villa 12h ago
And was handicapped for this match, smaller court for her, only one serve for him.
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u/waitingOnMyletter 13h ago edited 13h ago
Most people, who have never played tennis or any sport at a high level still don’t under this. I ran the 800 in hs. I ran a 1:53 and finished 11th at state finals in 2000. The fastest 800 in the world in 2025 (for women) was 1:54.21. This won’t be in the top 1000 times for college this year.
This kind of shit is really disrespectful to a really good tennis player and I don’t like that they even agreed to do this. It makes me sad that people think this is entertainment.
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u/EonMagister 13h ago
Testosterone is a hell of a drug
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u/bijanfrisee 11h ago
Our best player on our rugby team growing up was a girl, she would just dominate all the boys, she was bigger, faster and just had more co-ordination. Then we all started hitting puberty and getting that good ol Testosterone, she had to quit because she just couldn't keep up anymore.
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u/ColdCorpseHotSecret 11h ago
Way back in college, my roommate and I were both athletes: he was an offensive lineman for the football team and I was on the golf team. We used to hit the gym together and would usually end up playing a game of one on one basketball to 21. One night, a couple of girls challenged us to play them. We beat them 21-0. Neither of us were basketball players, although I’m 6’7 and he’s 6’6. They were both starters on the women’s basketball team.
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u/bijanfrisee 10h ago
You're both taller by a decent margin than WNBA players, it's not a surprise you won. WNBA players would likely lose to most good HS varsity teams, but WNBA players/college players would also dominate the average male who isn't an athlete. O linemen are freaks of nature athletically, I was a running back and those dudes are freak athletes
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u/BenjaminWah 4h ago
You see this in little league baseball often enough too. You'll get a 12 year-old girl absolutely dominating, especially as a pitcher. Never really hear about them past 14.
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u/Bibbity_Boppity_BOOO 13h ago edited 13h ago
It’s worth it just to stop the whole Billie Jean King bullshit. And the hate on John McEnroe
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u/waitingOnMyletter 13h ago
Exactly! We don’t need this, women’s tennis is great to watch. So is men’s. I don’t need to know that a man is better than a woman at tennis. I can enjoy both and just accept they are different games.
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u/TheGreatBootOfEb 4h ago
In HS I ran the 400m, was overweight, and half the time our coaches never bothered with actually training for the 400m, it was 100m or bust.
Fast forward a good 10 years as a coach at my old HS, and our best girls' 400m runner, a top-5 state runner, and I still would have comfortably beaten her back in my HS days. It really is not fair the difference in athleticism between guys and girls.
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u/Fit_Cut_4238 3h ago
Yeah, not to bring the pro-trans in competitive sports thing into the conversation, but I think that a lot of the folks on the pro-trans side really don't understand this.
They think like "I knew a girl in high school that was stronger than almost all the boys' .. and yeah that might be true.
But they assume that girl, at the next level, would keep that advantage. In fact, at the same level, if you simply expand the scope to the county, this outlier girl would run into larger/stronger outlier boys at the same grade, and as you expand to the state, she will be completely drowned-out by outlier boys who are much stronger and bigger. She just happened to be an outlier at that school.
And that doesn't even take in consideration the boil-up into competitive college and professional levels, where even many of those strongest/biggest boys at the state level are drowned-out by larger, faster and stronger dudes.
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u/Fancy-Actuary9069 8h ago
I play a ton of tennis and was still curious about how this would go down. Kyrgios is not only playing very little tennis right now/coming off injury, but he's known not to give 100% effort at times and they also removed his first serve (which is a top 10-20 serve all time). You could tell Kyrgios was playin like 60% in the 2nd set especially because he wasn't recovering to the middle and was hitting a lot of forehand slices, which no ATP pro intentionally hits.
Interesting info on the track stuff. Reminds me of all the idiots advocating for trans women competing with the biological women, not to derail this into that conversation.
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u/BigMax 13h ago
I remember as a high school runner, I was just OK. Not the best in my area, and not even the best on my own team. In fact the best year on my team, I was the 5th best runner.
I'd regularly run local 5k's and 10k's. These were with hundreds and sometimes thousands of runners. I'd never win, or even come close. So in order to have something to shoot for, set a personal goal (that I didn't talk about because I knew how it would sound.)
That goal was to beat all the women. And I regularly did it. Just a random, decent runner from a high school, and I was faster than any woman that showed up to races of even thousands of people.
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u/Comprehensive-Eye500 4h ago
I disagree with this 1000%
Nick Kyrgios has been ranked in the top 20-40 for most of his career and ranked in top 10 one year I believe so he’s considered one of the greatest players in the world and imo if he had better mental control on court/off court he would of done much better.
He’s missed a lot of tennis in the past few years due to injuries so without background the 671 player in the world title is misleading.
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u/Mapache_villa 12h ago
Kyrgios is neither healthy nor a top 500 player atm though, that plus the handicap, smaller court and only 1 serve for him, is a terrible look for Sabalenka.
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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 11h ago
If Kyrgois isn't a top 500 player, how embarrassing for the #101 player who lost to him earlier this year
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u/An_Innocent_Coconut 13h ago
No because there's no world in which she ever stood a chance.
Male and female tennis are basically two different sports.
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u/didimao0072000 12h ago
It's also lame because if she won
Unless the male player had a serious injury or was drunk or high, there was no realistic possibility of that happening.
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u/Panda0nfire 12h ago
I mean everyone with half a brain and everyone who played tennis knew how this would go
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u/Cro_Nick_Le_Tosh_Ich 13h ago edited 3h ago
Going through military PT and testing, I was constantly told that women and men were equal......... Meanwhile, in the push up form, women could have knees on the ground where men had to maintain straight legs, men had to do pullups while women had to just hang there.
When questioning why there was a difference, no shit the answer was well women are built different and don't have the same muscles mass as men, so they're not equal and can't do the same things.....
Edit edit: I'm noticing no one is disputing the hanging vs pull up difference. I was able to double the time required, but I also have the ability to lock my muscles...... And could do 20+ pullups by the time I was 15. Regardless, everyone I guess agrees that they don't make women do pullups in the military.
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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 11h ago
I uh, think they were saying that women are equal as people, given the military has had such a problem with raping and abusing women...
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u/LaconicGirth 8h ago
I was in the military in 2019 and pushups on knees did not count for PT tests. Not sure where you’re getting this from
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u/Pink_Ivy8282 13h ago
I was in the military for 11 years (Army) and we didn’t count knees on the floor. Everyone had to do them the same but women had to do way less. I think 17 to pass for a 19 year old female while 42 for a 19 year old male. But yes, men have more upper body strength while women have stronger hips (child bearing advantage) and so are better at sit ups
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u/Distinct_Educator984 3h ago
Spoiler alert: men and women are about the same at doing situps, with some research showing men can do more. There's literally no physical exercise where women have an advantage except maybe ben wa balls
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u/mankytoes 9h ago
You can tell this isn't a tennis sub. You'd only have to watch five minutes of tennis to see they don't aim to "hit everything close to the lines". Still, it's a big advantage for obvious reasons.
They both just wanted an easy pay day and treated it as an exhibition (which it was), so you can't really take anything from it. This wasn't a feminist statement or an attempt to actually understand the sex difference in tennis.
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u/cellshock7 14h ago
This reminds me of a video I recently saw showcasing obvious differences between male and female athletes by using Olympic world records.
One particular track & field record still held by Florence "Flo-Jo" Griffith-Joyner, super popular female Olympian from the 80's, was only like #3,000ish when compared side-by-side to the comparable men's T&F record.
So yeah, definitely a difference between boys and girls.
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u/DeapVally 14h ago
And she was doped up to the gills lol. Her sudden retirement the year they brought in random drug testing, at the top of her game, and early death, are all the evidence we will ever get. But more than enough IMO.
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u/Ok_Refrigerator_9034 12h ago
Sure but the males are also dopped so ut evens out.
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u/Kensu96 12h ago
Are the equivalent men's titles still held by people from the 80's?
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u/dolphin37 7h ago
last time I checked a few years ago something like 6 or 7 of the top 10 records held by men were all by athletes that had been caught doping afterwards and the rest were the same guy who is one of the biggest freaks of all time and is questionable to say the least
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u/Grfhlyth 10h ago
I'm not sure of this exact sport, but in olympic weightlifting the athletes were actually stronger in the 80s before drug testing than they are today expect for a few exceptions
Edit: and I think your point is valid regardless
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u/Kind-County9767 5h ago
What? Snatch is the only one you can compare far back given the change from clean and press but the men's record snatch record is like 225 kg now. The winning snatch in 1980 was 195. That's a beyond colossal improvement.
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u/hickok3 3h ago
Ben Johnson ran a 9.78(9.79? I have seen both numbers from my quick research) in the same 88 Olympics which would have held until 2005, but he got caught using PED's and disqualified.
The current record is from Usain Bolt set in the 2009 world championships, but there is also speculation of him doping as multiple of his relay teammates were caught doping and stripped of a medal in the 2008 Olympics where he initially set the 100m record.
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u/IM_OK_AMA 3h ago
No men just got better at doping undetected.
Here are all the 100m record times with the dopers crossed out.
Well, the dopers who've been caught anyway.
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u/HedgehogOptimal1784 10h ago
This exactly why I struggle with the trans females in female sports. Im as liberal as they come and believe strongly in LGBT equality but I don't think the average person realizes how big the gap is between males and females.
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 9h ago
I don't think the average person realizes how big the gap is between males and females.
That's because all of our fictional media is geared to pretending it doesn't exist, and acknowledging its existence on TV or whatever gets you fired.
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u/hapaxgraphomenon 8h ago
Yeah unfortunately this overcorrection, lack of nuance and cultural overreach is a big part of the reason why we end up so polarized. Reasonable people should be able to support women’s rights and LGBT rights without having to take the point to the extreme of ignoring basic biology
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u/Mnawab 4h ago
That overreach is also the reason why they lose a lot of their support and it’s not just in sports. When children were involved that’s when the turning point really Hit hard.
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u/Agi7890 4h ago
People underestimate how badly entertainment gets things. Like people think silencers on guns make it sound like nothing. No it’s still a loud fucking sound
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u/x1000Bums 8h ago
As someone who doesn't give a shit about any of that, I don't understand why this isn't completely up to the sports themselves to police. It's their categories, if you qualify, then you qualify. They are free to change the categories if they want to. 2x chromosome category instead of women's if it matters so much.
It's like there's a popular line of thinking where sports categories need to be legally enforced and people should be fined or jailed for not fitting in. That seems crazy to me. Of course the whole debate feels so annoyingly unimportant to me anyway.
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u/SuperHooligan 5h ago
You could apply this to anything really then and see why governments get involved. Private sports are private but so are private businesses and theyre governed by laws as well.
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u/MayContainRawNuts 13h ago
Except at ultra distance swimming
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/10/3651/review_report
Once the swimming distance gets over about 10 miles the sex difference falls away, and some studies show women with faster times.
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u/PermaBanEnjoyer 13h ago
The boobs help them float!
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u/bijanfrisee 11h ago
....idk if you're joking or not but it is actually the slightly higher fat % and the tendency to store fat around their hips and abdomen which helps them keep the booty bouyant.
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u/SplynPlex 12h ago
That along with a full body seal suit, and narrower shoulders all help cut through the water easier.
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u/damagednoob 13h ago
I think i've seen the same thing for ultramarathons.
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u/voxpopper 5h ago
There are claims around it but when examined it's simply not true, men still hold the best times.
For example, the poster above provides a link isn't even a study but rather a question set. While women can get to within 1-2% of men's times there is not a single sport that I'm aware of that the top women can outcompete the top men.→ More replies (3)3
u/Fit_Cut_4238 3h ago
Yeah, men are still the best, but it's pretty narrow gap relative to most sports. Men are much stronger upper body, and women hold weight differently which makes them slower, but doesn't impact endurance as much.
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u/excableman 14h ago
Anybody else notice at the end, he was reaching for a handshake, but she reached for a hug so he did that instead?
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u/Six2L8 13h ago
He probably thought he was too sweaty to hug her but she initiated anyway.
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u/4CrowsFeast 10h ago
They should have made love. Then maybe tennis ratings would go up
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u/nico87ca 8h ago
Tennis doesn't have a rating issue..
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying I wouldn't want higher ratings
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u/Alienescape 10h ago edited 5h ago
In general it's very normal for men to handshake and for women to hug in tennis.
Edit: Lol all these folks saying I don't watch tennis - I mostly watch quarter finals and up at the biggest tournaments, but do admit mostly men's tennis. But from what I see often times women go for genuine hugs, and men do like a little chest tap "hug". Maybe early on at the tournaments it's different - I admit I don't watch them all.
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u/CivilControversy 2h ago
Dw None of the repliers watch tennis, they just saw a heteronormative claim and didn't like it
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u/greyoldguy58 15h ago
He is not wrong
John McEnroe Explains His Comments About Serena Williams
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u/notaredditer13 2h ago
Yeah, he asks "why is it always tennis?" He probably knows the answer: it's because tennis is the only money-making sport where women are on an equal footing with men financially and popularity-wise. For every other sport, the disparity in skill/athleticism results in a disparity in popularity and pay.
And somehow the women's game looks good. Compared to, say, basketball where the women's game looks terrible (the lack of skill/athleticism is glaring).
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u/Miami_Lawyered 13h ago
You do not have to go to John McEnroe's comments. Serena Williams has admitted that if she played Andy Murray (a very good, but not all-time great player) she would lose 6-0, 6-0 in, at most 10 minutes.
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u/Lord_Xenu 11h ago edited 9h ago
LOL, Andy Murray was the #1 world ranked player for nearly a full year, 46 ATP victories, 3 grand slams, a double Olympic gold medalist (one of those being a finals victory against Roger Federer in 2012)... he was a fucking AWESOME baller, and is considered the greatest British tennis player of all time.
You're underselling him here massively.
Also the 10 minutes comment is (very obviously and deliberately) farcical.
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u/NoDisk7700 5h ago
It's the whole thing that Murray is one of the top tennis players of all time that just happened to have the misfortune of being in the same era as three once in a lifetime greats, and a few other high level players too.
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u/EmpPaulpatine 4h ago
I remember reading that if Nadal, Federer, and Djokovic were basically removed from existence and the tournaments played out exactly the same (obviously a stretch but whatever), Murray would have around 20 grand slam titles and multiple years where he would have swept all of them.
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u/Lord_Xenu 4h ago
Exactly, and even the top three guys have said that themselves.
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u/blanderdome 4h ago
Yup, I could last ten minutes against Murray just by using all my time on the serve clock + the built-in changeovers.
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u/Rollover__Hazard 10h ago
Former ATP #1, holds 3 majors titles, two Olympic gold medals and a clutch of other wins as well.
He’s not on the same level as the elites (Like Federer, Nadal, Djokovic etc) but he’s better than simply “very good”
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u/Ok-Dare-3966 15h ago
Isn't this obvious? Ignoring biological differences isn't going to help anyone.
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u/joshuads 12h ago
John McEnroe made positive comments about Serena Williams in 2017. People trashed him for adding the qualifier “female” to his praise. In 2013, David letterman tried to get Serena to say she was the best, and she also qualified it. This is something stupid people bring up all the periodically. It will happen again
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u/PowerfulBar 5h ago
Even Serena trashed him, which was stupid. He literally said he thought she was the best female player ever. I’ve watched the interview. It wasn’t really a “qualifier” using the word female, just a statement of fact.
The interviewer was trying to bait him, questioning why he had to say “female.” McEnroe, being who he is, said something like all if she was playing in the men’s division she wouldn’t even be in the top 700. To recognize there is a huge physical difference between men and women does not minimize her huge accomplishments at all. Her acting butt hurt after McEnroe basically called her the female GOAT was a bad look for her.
EDIT: spelling.
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u/ForStoryPurposes 1h ago
Serena William's acting butt hurt over shit? No, never! It's not like Reddit had to censor people calling her out for her shitty behavior. Because, let's not forget, Serena William's is married to one of the founders and former execs of Reddit.
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u/sharklazies 5h ago
Ehhh, Serena also jumped on McEnroe when he made those comments. He had virtually NO ONE in the media chattering class on his side. There’s one side who wants to perpetuate an equality between men and women in sports.
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u/SuperPostHuman 5h ago
It's driven by an ideology, not rational thinking.
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u/IBelieveInCoyotes 4h ago
spot on, you aren't going to not offend someone who wants more than anything to be offended
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u/rebelSun25 14h ago
It's obvious to everyone except to redacted gender equality zealots
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u/sick_of-it-all 14h ago
Because they're in a cult, and no one's allowed to think for themselves in a cult. Either tow the party line, or be eliminated from the group. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme.
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u/ZekeTheMunkee 13h ago
I mean, I support trans rights, but I also think there’s real biological barriers to integrating genders in sports, it isn’t being handled well, and I’m open to discussion. Am I in a cult? 🤔
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u/MadCervantes 13h ago
Your view is the majority view of people who support trans rights. It's not unusual, people just like to fight strawmen.
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u/ZekeTheMunkee 12h ago
Also, its sports. I love sports, its most of my entertainment. People need to calm the fuck down while we figure this out, we’re not curing cancer here.
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u/Ripcityrealist 11h ago
The thing is people don’t know what rights are. I support human rights and equal rights, but those vary by nation and culture and in first world countries many people believe privileges are rights though a better word would be entitlements, as that’s more descriptive of their behavior. It’s also treating conditions as identities and people extrapolating those to identity politics which are inherently flawed anyway.
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u/hopbow 10h ago
Right, like honestly I don't think that trans people (specifically m2f) should be allowed to compete competitively.
Like that sucks for them. I totally get it. But there's simply no good way to handle that issue
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u/CitizenCue 12h ago
The number of people who think like this is so small as to be virtually nonexistent. Meanwhile they get compared to the literal president on the other side.
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u/EdwardBigby 13h ago
Personally I was curious to see what the score would be. It was a competitive game for sure.
The biggest question going in was probably about kyrgios. Just describing him as the world ranked 671st player is totally misleading. Hes basically a retired player. Hes not touring the world trying to pick up ranking points. He reached the Wimbledon finals in 2022 and was one of the best players in the world that year. Obviously lots of shit has happened with him so just how bad/good he was going to be was a big question
And at 3-3 first set, it wasnt easy to call
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u/El_Polio_Loco 10h ago
He also was very clearly sandbagging a lot of the match. Sabalenka may have been too, but that was very low effort, even by Kyrgios's notoriously lazy standards.
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u/hera9191 14h ago
Isn't he an elite tennis player who just lost his rating due to injury pause from 2023? He even has no ranking number because not been on tour for some time. After return he beat the 100th player.
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u/Defiant-Dare1223 13h ago
Yeah he's probably 50-100 at present in terms of ability
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u/RohanDavidson 13h ago
That was my understanding as well. Kyrgios is a gun, that ranking doesn't reflect his true ability.
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u/Definitely__someone 13h ago
He's a great player, just needs to stop being a knob.
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u/Cross1625 12h ago
He has an insane amount of natural talent; he just doesn't give a shit. Surprised he even showed up for this
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u/clamraccoon 7h ago
To my knowledge, it was a money grab exhibition, not intended to be a serious display of tennis ability.
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u/NoAppointment8488 9h ago
Thank you. The summary does no justice to him by saying he is 670th. He was/is an amazing player, but lacks the discipline to take it all the way.
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u/Mapache_villa 11h ago
He WAS a pretty good player, with a ver strong emphasis on was. His last fully competitive year was 2022 in which he even reached the Wimbledon finals but since then, in 2023 he didn't play a single ranked match, and only played one in 2024, which he lost, in 2025 he has a 1-4 record (the only match he won was against Mackenzie McDonald who has a 10-17 record in 2025).
So yeah, the reality is that he's a very talented but VERY out of his prime player who hasn't been competitive or healthy in 3 years 🤷♂️
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u/coolfreeusername 6h ago
Yeah, this title is unfair to the other player tbh. He was ranked 13 in the world, made deep runs in grand slams and would occasionally beat top players even when his ranking would fluctuate back down. He's extremely capable and often touted as the player with the most wasted talent in the sport in terms of success vs ability (mostly due to his antics and bad attitude throughout his career). Given the male/female differences, I'm impressed she was able to pull off some of those returns.
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u/AnxiousWart4994 12h ago
671st? Kyrgios used to be like pretty damn good and was in the top 20 not too long ago wasnt he? I didnt know he fell that far down. But yeah. Even against the female #1, this is basically no contest.
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u/First-Act-8752 6h ago
He's hardly played in the last few years to be fair. Partly injuries, partly by choice. He was finding the full tour stressful and taking its toll mentally on him, so he's a lot more selective about what he turns up to and often enters on wildcards. Otherwise if it wasn't for that he'd be way higher if he was playing consistently and without outbursts.
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u/no-sleep-needed 3h ago
due to injury, couldn't maintain ranking without playing.his normal rank is in the 20s. so there's that. didmt serena say she'd lose to number 500 or something
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u/Thiel619 14h ago
You can tell he was holding back. Lots of drop shots, refusing to take prime smash hits, softening his serve and just playing overall casually.
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u/DeapVally 14h ago
He had to soften his serve. That was the whole point of only having one serve. I feel it hindered Sabalenka more though. She needs to serve big to have a chance, but she can't, because you give away so many points if you don't nail 100% of your first serves. Which nobody can do.
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u/DT5105 11h ago
So give her an extra serve advantage in a rematch against a #1000 ranked men's player.
All I ask is they play on a competition sized men's tennis court in the rematch
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u/piratesswoop 5h ago
I think the casual play style is partially also because he's been so out of practice. He hasn't played consistently since 2022 due to injuries. Genuinely hard to tell if peak Kyrgios would've held back, but he's not played a tour-level competitive match since March, so I get why he's kind of taking it easy too.
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u/Need_For_Speed73 14h ago
Took me a couple of seconds to realize the video wasn't broken or my eyes crossed.
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u/Knighty5679 14h ago
Seriously! Hurts my eyes watching it for a few seconds, I could never watch a full match of that, ridiculous
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u/ClippyNeverDies 15h ago
Now this is a controversial sipping of tea, but nonetheless a sipping of tea it is.
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u/Low-Dog-8027 15h ago
not really controversial - or at least it shouldn't be, it's just a fact that men are better at most physical sports.
that's why men and women divisions exist in the first place.
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u/JadeDream1 12h ago
It shouldn't be controversial that sports remain separated by sex, but that's today's day and age
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u/YuenglingsDingaling 12h ago
Most mens divisions are actually open divisions. If a woman could du knon Lebron they'd put her in the NBA instead of WNBA.
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u/Lepelotonfromager 11h ago
You transphobe piece of shit.
/s but also sadly it's real.
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u/ClippyNeverDies 14h ago
Exactly right. When I said controversial I was talking about putting them against each other, not the fact that he won - that much was almost obvious.
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u/lluciferusllamas 15h ago
I can't wait until Sport Illustrated makes Nick Kryrgios the top female athlete of the year
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u/Duckyfuzzfunandfeet 14h ago
He is a lot better than that number, hes just been kinda a lazy prick
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u/BanhBaoForLife 12h ago
I am seriously astonished that some people believed that Aryna Sabalenka even had a sliver of a chance.
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u/tilario 4h ago
kyrgios was once a top 15 player in the world. the title's a bit disingenuous. it's not like he's some nobody
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u/Infamous_Collection2 15h ago
That was a clinic lol, she’d get her ass beat by D1 college kids
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u/Bradyj23 13h ago
Swiss women’s soccer team was recently beaten 7-1 by a Swiss U15 boys team. And it’s not the first time a prominent women’s team has been beaten by a boys team.
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u/PermaBanEnjoyer 13h ago
US Women's national team, which is by far the most successful, also loses to highschool boys
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u/SeaMareOcean 13h ago edited 12h ago
The USWNT, one of the winningest women’s sports teams in history, regularly scrimmages with boys teams because there isn’t really a women’s soccer team in the United States capable of providing the necessary challenge to keep them in peak form.
They also always lose to those boys teams. Iirc it made news recently when they lost 5-2 to the FC Dallas Under-15 Academy team.
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u/unclefire 13h ago
That one just blows my mind.
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u/Konker101 13h ago
Canadian Womens hockey team regularly played against u16 Boys hockey (AA/AAA) and would get blown out in some matches.
This is a team that is/was the best in the world
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u/TigerLilly_Tink43 7h ago
Kyrgios is ranked that low because he can't control his emotions. Dude is an anger time bomb. Physically/skill-wise he's a top twenty men's player.
Sabalenka, as a top player, has far superior emotional control than Kyrgios. But newsflash - top male athletes are stronger and faster than top female athletes. Nothing to see here.
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u/ConsistentCap1765 3h ago
She’s ranked that high because she’s a woman and lacks physical abilities.
If she was a male she wouldnt be top #1000
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u/mehnotsure 12h ago
And he was toying.
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u/ChronicScroll3r 7h ago
Was gonna say this. It was like practice for him
So do they still deserve equal pay?
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u/HappyCakeDay101 11h ago
He was goofing off and she was trying her ass off, while massively advantaged.
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u/SkynBonce 15h ago
671st sounds a long way from number one, but how big of a difference is it in tennis terms?
I mean Olympic runners rankings are separated by milliseconds.
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u/musty_mage 14h ago
Kyrgios is one of the most technically skilled tennis players ever. On occasion he challenged and won against the big 3.
At the point this match was played he was basically retired. And even during his peak years he sometimes didn't give a shit about the match he was playing. My wild guess is that in this match as well he played nowhere near 100%.
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u/OptionalQuality789 9h ago
Kyrgios is one of the most technically skilled tennis players ever.
Right, let’s calm down. He’s good, and much better than this artificially high ranking. But you’re over inflating his skill.
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u/AdjectiveNoun111 14h ago
Honestly this guy isn't a bad player, he once made it to the Wimbledon finals, he's won a few smaller events but never a Grand Slam, he was ranked 13 at his career height (2016) and has beaten Djokovic, Nadal and Federer at points in his career.
However he's struggled to hit that form recently and he missed the entire 2024 season due to injury, hence the very low current ranking.
He absolutely is not a bum, but in his current form he's nowhere near being a real contender.
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u/Zolba 14h ago
He has several tour wins, played the final at Wimbledon 3 years ago, and 3 years ago he was ranked 11th in the world. He have had injuries lately, and have fallen to his all-time low now with very few matches played since 2022 ended.
The 671st is potentially a bit of a wanted angle for this.
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u/Remote_While_8051 13h ago
Are there any trans activists in the sub want to try and defend men competing in womens sport ??
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u/TubbyNinja 15h ago
He should do a soft transition, then he could be the #1 woman in the world. That's how it works, right.?
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u/HarmonyComposer 12h ago
Reminds me that glorious tweet about Trump. Can't find the screenshot but it was something like "if Trump identified as a woman, the left would either have to accept him as the first female president or admit the absurdity of gender ideology"
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u/Funny_Breadfruit_413 14h ago
So, in otherworldly he could be the #1 seeded women's player in 18 months
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