On Friday, the Australian Open held its second Pride Day, complete with rainbow flags and the finals of the only LGBTQ tennis tournament played as part of a grand slam, the Glam Slam.
Despite the festivities, an openly gay male tennis player is yet to set foot on court at Melbourne Park – or any other tennis arena – to compete at the professional level.
Tennis legend Billie Jean King joins in at the Glam Slam finals on Pride Day at Melbourne Park.Credit:Tennis Australia/ Luis Ascui
“It’s one of the few large international commercial sports that don’t have an openly gay male player,” said Dr Erik Denison, a behavioural science researcher at Monash University and lead author of the first international study on homophobia in sport. “The question is, why?”
Openly gay players are nothing new in the women’s game. Billie Jean King and Sam Stosur are major winners in singles, while in 2019 Belgian players Alison van Uytvanck and Greet Minnen became the first gay couple to contest the Wimbledon doubles title. But the sport is still waiting for its first male player to come out while competing.
Tennis publication Clay asked American player Taylor Fritz about the anomaly in December. “I’m not sure if there are homosexual tennis players in the top 100,” Fritz said. “Statistically speaking, there should be … I think it is odd because I feel like a player would be accepted.”
In 2021, Denison and his colleagues surveyed professional ATP players – mostly men in the top 250 – on the issue. Three-quarters had heard homophobic slurs used by other players and, despite Fritz’s assessment, only a minority of professional players believed a gay player would feel welcome on tour.
Top American player Taylor Fritz was asked recently about the lack of gay ATP players.Credit:Getty
Denison said tennis was a lonely sport for touring singles players and men were more likely to engage in negative banter with their competitors compared to team sports.
“Men struggle to interact with each other and socialise in a positive way, and the way that they do it generally in sports is through sexist and homophobic banter,” Denison said, adding that tennis players used more homophobic language compared to AFL and rugby. “You’d have to have a really, really thick skin if you’re gay to be able to play a sport like tennis because there’s much more of a ‘bro culture’ than in sports like AFL.”
Although there are examples of gay women in professional tennis, their representation on the pro tour is much lower than in the general population (an estimated 4 per cent in Australia).
Based on surveys of community tennis clubs and lower-tiered tournaments over two years, Denison said the sport’s lack of gay players is unlikely to change soon.
Josh Cavallo, the first footballer to come out as gay, playing in the A-League, at the Australian Open’s Pride Day.Credit:Fiona Hamilton / Tennis Australia
“At the amateur level, you don’t see as much homophobic language, surprisingly, as the professional level. But there’s no gay people. There’s just no one,” he said. “It’s quite a white sport, it’s a sort of upper-class sport. And those don’t lend themselves to being an inclusive sport. It’s just viewed as a sport that gay people shouldn’t play.”
Small studies have indicated the use of homophobic slurs at community sports clubs falls following pride events. But pride events at professional tournaments can be detrimental, Denison argues, because they give the impression sporting organisations are addressing homophobia while players are still subjected to slurs in the locker room.
“Holding a pride game at the Australian Open does nothing to fix the behaviour at a community tennis club, where kids are calling each other f-g and p–f on a regular basis, and gay kids are being put at risk of suicide and self harm because there’s this language it’s going on.
“You need to come down quite hard and change the culture in sport. Education campaigns do nothing to change this behaviour. Officials need to come down firmly and enforce the policy which bans that language.”
Tennis Australia said it had worked with researchers from Monash and Swinburne University to assist research into inclusivity and homophobia in sport, and said using the global platform of the Australian Open to celebrate diversity was important.
Sixteen community clubs hosted AO Pride night and were provided with training from LGBTIQ+ sport advocacy organisation Pride 2 Play.
