DownSwinging.com

Lleyton Hewitt, Australian tennis player and former Wimbledon champion, made what I thought were some controversial comments yesterday. Hewitt was asked about the possibility of extending women’s matches in Grand Slams to five sets, just like the men’s.

“I don’t think a lot of them would last five sets,” he said, according to Reuters. “The training you have to do to last five sets, especially seven best-of-five-set matches, it’s a lot more than three-set matches. There would obviously be question marks [over whether] a lot of them could last that much,”

Personally, that sounds to me like he is indirectly saying that the women don’t have to train as hard as the men, something that I think quite a few women’s tennis players would feel fairly insulted by. And I don’t believe for a second that Serena Williams would call it quits in a five-set match before she was done.