Total dominance in men's vs women's tennis.

Take a look at the number of grand slams won by the greatest male and female tennis players of all time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_statistics#Most_Grand_Slam_singles_titles_.28all_time.29

In the following table, the first column is number of grand slam titles, and the subsequent columns are number of competitors in that category who have won at least that many titles.

N Mx1 Wx1 Mx2 Wx2
24 0 1 0 0
22 0 2 0 0
20 0 2 0 2
19 0 3 0 2
18 0 5 0 2
14 1 5 0 3
13 2 5 0 3
12 3 6 1 3
11 5 6 2 4
10 6 7 4 5
9 6 9 4 5
8 11 11 4 7
7 19 16 8 8
6 25 21 10 10
5 28 29 17 12
4 35 34 26 20
3 51 46
2 74 54


Now, this doesn't tell us anything at all about the relative abilities of male and female tennis players, because all the men were competing against men and vice versa.

But what is very striking is that there have been several more female players much better than any of their competition than there have been male players, both in singles and doubles.

which might be connected to the length of games. A five set match is physically very hard (and I'll stick my neck out and say a five set match is harder for men than a three set match for women), so the men's game will depend more on players being at their physical peak, meaning there's a quicker turnover of the top players. Certainly, players like Navratilova and King kept their careers going a long time.

For your idea of "much better than any of their competition", I think you should look at their dominance in a particular year (or maybe a couple of years) - how many times someone has one all 4 grand slam titles, 3 of them and so on.

The link I gave lists years between first and last win, and they're certainly often longer for women than for men.

regards to how seriously it has been taken as a sport, that is changing, and I doubt you're gonna see a woman dominate like the way Martina or Chris did, and that's good for the sport. Even when they were playing, the game had changed drastically...Margaret Court Smith has 25 Grand Slams, but the most are from the Australian, when it was pretty much onl australians who played in it...you couldn't just fly in for a couple weeks and play...it was a big deal to get there. Chris only played in 4 Australians, winning 2.

Also, there are more opportunities for women tennis players...look at all the endorsements and options that keep them unfocused on the game. Did Billie Jean King have those options, 35-40 years ago?