Editing Tennis (section)

=== Professional players ===
Professional tennis players enjoy the same relative perks as most top sports personalities: clothing, equipment and endorsements. Like players of other individual sports such as [[golf]], they are not salaried, but must play and finish highly in tournaments to obtain prize money.

In recent years,{{when|date=October 2023}} professional tennis players have been mocked by tabloids and fans for the involuntary or deliberate noise caused by players' [[Grunting (tennis)|grunting]]. This controversy has spurred the Grand Slam Committee, the International Tennis Association, and the Women's Tennis Association to teach players techniques to avoid grunting.<ref>"[https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8103913/women-tennis-plans-eliminate-excessive-grunting-next-generation-players Women's tennis battles 'grunt work']". ''ESPN.com.'' 27 June 2012. Retrieved 24 July 2021.</ref>

====Singles and doubles professional careers====
[[File:Fleming & McEnroe Wimbledon 1980s.jpg|thumb|180px|[[John McEnroe|McEnroe]] with [[Peter Fleming (tennis)|Fleming]] playing as a doubles team at Wimbledon in the 1980s.]]
While players are gradually less competitive in singles by their late 20s and early 30s, they can still continue competitively in doubles (as instanced by [[Martina Navratilova]] and [[John McEnroe]], who won doubles titles in their 40s).

In the Open Era, several female players such as [[Martina Navratilova]], [[Margaret Court]], [[Martina Hingis]], [[Serena Williams]], and [[Venus Williams]] (the latter two sisters playing together) have been prolific at both singles and doubles events throughout their careers. [[John McEnroe]] is one of the very few professional male players to be top ranked in both singles and doubles at the same time,<ref name="nyt20000130">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.julianrubinstein.com/john.html |first=Julian |last=Rubinstein |title=Being John McEnroe |magazine=[[The New York Times Magazine]] |date=30 January 2000 |access-date=9 February 2018 |archive-date=6 July 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100706053125/http://www.julianrubinstein.com/john.html |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tennisfame.com/hall-of-famers/john-mcenroe |title=John McEnroe |website=[[International Tennis Hall of Fame]] |access-date=28 October 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029220802/http://www.tennisfame.com/hall-of-famers/john-mcenroe |archive-date=29 October 2013 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J6M0AEe3xA0C&q=mcenroe+%22greatest+doubles%22&pg=PA144 |last=Cronin |first=Matthew |title=Epic: John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and the Greatest Tennis Season Ever |date=10 March 2011 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-01595-7 |page=144}}</ref> and [[Yevgeny Kafelnikov]] is the most recent male player to win multiple Grand Slams in both singles and doubles during the same period of his career.

In terms of public attention and earnings (see below), singles champions have far surpassed their doubles counterparts. The Open Era, particularly the men's side, has seen many top-ranked singles players that only sparingly compete in doubles, while having "doubles specialists" who are typically being eliminated early in the singles draw but do well in the doubles portion of a tournament. Notable doubles pairings include [[The Woodies]] ([[Todd Woodbridge]] and [[Mark Woodforde]]) and the [[Bryan brothers]] (identical twin brothers [[Bob Bryan|Robert Charles "Bob" Bryan]] and [[Mike Bryan|Michael Carl "Mike" Bryan]]). Woodbridge has disliked the term "doubles 'specialists'", saying that he and Woodforde "set a singles schedule and doubles fitted in around that", although later in Woodbridge's career he focused exclusively on doubles as his singles ranking fell too low that it was no longer financially viable to recover at that age. Woodbridge noted that while top singles players earn enough that they do not need to nor want to play doubles, he suggested that lower-ranked singles players outside the Top Ten should play doubles to earn more playing time and money.<ref name="tennis.com">{{cite news|url=https://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2016/04/doubles-specialists-face-unusual-pressure-atmosphere-in-olympic-tennis/58267/|title=Doubles specialists face unusual pressure, atmosphere in Olympic tennis|website=Tennis.com}}</ref><ref name="tennismash.com">{{cite web|url=https://tennismash.com/2017/03/14/woodbridge-doubles-specialists-tennis-players/|title=Woodbridge: Doubles 'specialists' or tennis players?|date=14 March 2017|website=Tennismash}}</ref>

====Olympics====
The Olympics doubles tennis tournament necessitates that both members of a doubles pairing be from the same country, hence several top professional pairs such as [[Jamie Murray]] and [[Bruno Soares]] cannot compete in the Olympics. Top-ranked singles players that are usually rivals on the professional circuit, such as [[Boris Becker]] and [[Michael Stich]], and [[Roger Federer]] and [[Stan Wawrinka]] have formed a rare doubles partnership for the Olympics. Unlike professional tennis tournaments (see below) where singles players receive much more prize money than doubles players, an Olympic medal for both singles and doubles has similar prestige. The Olympics is more of a priority for doubles champions while singles champions often skip the tournament.<ref name="tennis.com"/><ref name="tennismash.com"/> While the ATP has voted for Olympic results to count towards player ranking points, WTA players voted against it.<ref name="Los Angeles Times">{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-06-sp-65453-story.html|title=Raymond Is Taking Issue With a Doubles Standard|date=6 August 2000|website=Los Angeles Times}}</ref>

For the [[2000 Olympics]], [[Lisa Raymond]] was passed over for Team USA in favour of [[Serena Williams]] by captain [[Billie Jean King]], even though Raymond was the top-ranked doubles player in the world at the time, and Raymond unsuccessfully challenged the selection.<ref name="Los Angeles Times"/>

====Prize money====
In professional tennis tournaments such as [[The Championships, Wimbledon|Wimbledon]], the singles competition receives the most prize money and coverage, followed by doubles, and then mixed doubles usually receive the lowest monetary awards.<ref>{{cite news|title=Wimbledon Prize Money|url=https://sports.yahoo.com/tennis/news?slug=ap-wimbledonprizemoneylist|agency=Associated Press|access-date=29 June 2011}}{{Dead link|date=August 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> For instance in the [[US Open (tennis)#Prize money|US Open]] as of 2018, the men's and women's singles prize money (US$40,912,000) accounts for 80.9 percent of total player base compensation, while men's and women's doubles (US$6,140,840), men's and women's singles qualifying (US$3,008,000), and mixed doubles (US$505,000) account for 12.1 percent, 5.9 percent, and 1.0 percent, respectively. The singles winner receives US$3,800,000, while the doubles winning pair receives $700,000 and the mixed doubles winning pair receives US$155,000.<ref name="Prize money">{{cite web | url=https://www.usopen.org/en_US/visit/prize_money.html | title=2018 US Open Prize Money | publisher=[[United States Tennis Association]] | access-date=29 August 2018}}</ref>