DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Nick Kyrgios gained the newest model of the “Battle of the Sexes” in tennis, beating top-ranked girls’s participant Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 6-3 in an exhibition match that represented gentle leisure moderately than one other landmark second for gender equality.
There was laughing and joking between the gamers, some under-arm serves, over-the-top grunting on photographs, and even some dancing from Sabalenka throughout a timeout to entertain the group on the 17,000-seat Coca-Cola Area in Dubai — the place the most costly tickets offered for approaching $800.
Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up who has performed solely six tour-level matches within the final three years due to wrist and knee accidents, appeared to play inside himself at occasions and confronted the drawback of Sabalenka’s facet of the courtroom being almost 10 per cent smaller in an try and stage the taking part in area. The gamers have been solely given one serve per level, moderately than two.
Kyrgios was drenched in sweat by the point he clinched victory off his third match level and the pair have been all smiles once they embraced on the web.
Kyrgios acknowledged feeling nervous and having to “strap in.”
“I believe it is a nice stepping stone for the game of tennis,” the Australian stated.
The so-called “Battle of the Sexes” was a reputation borrowed from the 1973 match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, which King gained in straight units within the Houston Astrodome and passed off amid King’s efforts to begin a feminine tour and get equal pay in tennis.
Fifty-two years on and the newest iteration had no wider cultural significance. As a substitute, Sabalenka and Kyrgios — members of the identical company, Evolve, that has organized the exhibition — simply wished to placed on a present, have interaction a youthful viewers and make some cash.
Kyrgios could be considered a controversial option to play in such a match, given he pleaded responsible to shoving a former girlfriend to the bottom throughout an argument in 2021 — he escaped conviction on a cost of widespread assault — and has beforehand expressed his opposition to equal pay in tennis.
