Tennis Players Benefit Greatly From Having Men And Women Compete Together At Grand Slam Events

Since 2007, women have received an equal share of the prize money at the four tennis grand slam events. The same cannot be said for women playing in golf's majors and it is not even close.

Despite the similarities in how the sports are organized and staged, there is a huge gap between what the women and men make at golf's biggest tournaments.

The difference is that the women in tennis play alongside the men at the grand slams and the networks pay for the rights to broadcast the entire tournament, both the men and the women. This logically (although it took far too long) led to the prize money being distributed equally among the men and the women.

Obviously this is not the case in golf as the men and women play separate majors. As a result, broadcast rights between the men's and women's majors are dramatically different.

While it may be logistically impossible, if the LPGA could ever find a way to get the women to play with the men at the majors, à la tennis, the popularity of the women's game would likely soar which in turn would increase the popularity of the sport and the majors overall. Not only would prize money for the women increase at those tournaments, but likely for the men as well as the value of broadcast rights would likely skyrocket.