Chapter 8: The WTA tour's global reach extends to nations and athletes everywhere 

Tennis Channel's year-long celebration of the WTA Tour's 50th anniversary, brought to you by Intuit Quickbooks, continues with Chapter 8: Global Reach (Watch our feature video above.)

• For Chapter 1: Thank You, Gladys, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 2: Red Hot Women's Tennis, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 3: Chrissie & Martina, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 4: Steffi & Monica, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 5: Venus & Serena, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 6: Teenage Dream, CLICK HERE
• For Chapter 7, The Future is Now, CLICK HERE

The worldwide impact of the Hologic WTA Tour runs wide and deep. In every corner of the globe, from indoor centers in the Czech Republic to clay courts in Tunisia, longstanding clubs in Great Britain and Australia, public parks in the United States, new facilities in China and beyond, tennis is by far the most significant women's sport on the planet—at once athletic, economic, and cultural.

Start with staggering leaps in prize money:

• In 1971, the first full year of the Virginia Slims Circuit, total prize money was $750,000.
• A decade later, that figure had grown to $7.4 million.
• By 1991: $24.6 million.
• And in 2023, $180 million, comprising a worldwide circuit of more than 1,650 players from approximately 84 nations.

The WTA Tour’s events span six continents and nearly 30 countries, in total reaching a global audience that exceeds 700 million people.

“The global reach of tennis, and the influence of the women who play the game, is powerful,” said Danette Leighton, CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “The Women’s Sports Foundation’s research shows that having positive role models encourages girls and women to continue playing sports, thereby growing the game.”

The WTA Tour’s events span six continents and nearly 30 countries, in total reaching a global audience that exceeds 700 million people.

Two historic occurrences helped spur this growth. First, there was the high-quality tennis played during the tour’s early years of the 1970s and early ‘80s. Such champions as Billie Jean King, Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong, Chrissie Evert, Martina Navratilova, Virginia Wade, Tracy Austin and Hana Mandlikova lit up the courts, won multiple majors, and generated increased public involvement with the game. And as former top 20 player Leslie Allen has pointed out, it greatly helped that many tournaments were staged during those years not in small clubs, but at large arenas, located in such major urban areas around the U.S.

Then there came another shift that proved exceptionally propulsive. In 1981, it was announced that tennis would once again become an Olympic sport. That had last been the case in 1924. There’d been a test event in 1968, but no further progress for several years. So it was that there was another test tournament in 1984, followed by full-fledged status at the 1988 Games. And professionals were allowed to compete.

Granted entry into the pantheon of Olympic sports, tennis’ visibility and significance soared in countries all over the world. Nations such as Russia and China, always eager to cite the Olympics as a source of national pride, began to fund player development programs. By the late ‘90s, Russians such as Anna Kournikova had made a major mark on the WTA Tour.

Soon came a flood. In 2004, three Russian women won singles majors, starting with Anastasia Myskina at Roland Garros, followed by Maria Sharapova’s Wimbledon victory, and Svetlana Kuznetsova’s US Open title run. Seven years later, Li Na won Roland Garros, a match watched by 116 million residents of China.

“The Olympics are always about representing my country,” said Tunisian Ons Jabeur. “It’s very important to me as (I’m from) a small country; everyone is following me. It’s part of me to represent Tunisia. I’m not just playing for myself; I’m playing for everyone back in Tunisia and the Arab world.”

The reach of women’s tennis has been so great that it has inspired athletes in other sports. Diana Nyad is world-renowned for her tremendous accomplishments as a swimmer. As far back as 1986, Nyad wrote an article for the New York Times praising Evert: “She has been the mature athlete who views her sport and her position within it with a refreshing perspective that says, at once, that each shot is crucial to her pride but that each match is but a small episode within the framework of life itself.”

Many WNBA players, as well as soccer stars Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach, have cited the strong influence of tennis.

“Billie Jean King is the icon of icons as it relates to not just women’s sports, but what I emulate myself after,” said Wambach. “This is the woman who has fought for a half century so that I could have the life that I have, and that I could have played on the stadiums and stages that I played on.”

According to Leighton, “[King’s] influence on the court has transcended tennis and has inspired generations of women athletes from the USWNT to the WNBA to the World Surf League to use their voices and fight for equal pay for equal play.”

What started in the fall of 1970, with Gladys Heldman and the Original Nine, has become a worldwide movement of ambitious and passionate athletes.

“Our first goal was to see a day when any girl or woman in the world, if she were good enough, would have a place to compete,” wrote King (with Cynthia Starr) in her latest book, Trailblazers: The Unmatched Story of Women’s Tennis. “Not play, but compete. Second, we wanted her to be appreciated for her accomplishments, not just her looks. And third, we wanted her to be able to make a living with her craft—to have a chance to make her greatest skill a vocation.”