Amanda Anisimova took home the biggest title of her career by winning the WTA 1000 Qatar TotalEnergies Open over the weekend, but a short remark by one of the players beaten in the doubles final opened up a much longer conversation about gender equality at the longtime tour stop.
After Jiang Xinyu and Wu Fang-Hsien lost to Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in Saturday’s doubles final, Wu spoke on behalf of the beaten pair. Though she spoke glowingly about an “amazing tournament” that provides “all the best stuff,” there was one thing missing from the team’s first WTA 1000 final experience.
“Last year we had the player gifts,” she said, “but I don’t know why this year, they don’t have it.”
In the moment, Wu’s comment was treated flippantly during the trophy ceremony’s run of show. But Ellen Perez, a member of the WTA Players’ Council, opened up a discussion on social media that was much more serious.
Perez provided context to Wu’s remark in a post to her account on X, formerly Twitter, by saying that the players who competed at the event were gifted a water bottle—after previously receiving a bracelet last year.
“I guess that even got too much to ask for,” Perez wrote. She also claimed that the men who compete in Qatar’s ATP 500 event, a less prestigious tournament in the tour hierarchy, receive iPhones “every year”.
