Daily Bagel: Al Jazeera won't be acquiring Tennis Channel after all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jq3BBNp6KI
The Daily Bagel is your dose of the interesting reporting, writing and quipping from around the Internet.
• Video: Roger Federer has a new Lindt commercial and it's just as awkward as it should be.
• All that talk about Al Jazeera possibly acquiring Tennis Channel? It was all bunk.
• From The Tennis Space, why it's important for Wimbledon to support equal prize money.
The lack of strength in depth in the women’s game was another stick with which to beat it and there are plenty of people who still shake their heads when the first round is littered with one-sided victories. But it might be pointed out that in last year’s Wimbledon, 31 of the 64 men’s first-round matches were over in straight sets (including a number of retirements). (It was 43 in the women’s event, for the record.) No one pointed the finger at Albert Ramos when he won three games against Roger Federer in round one; yet plenty did as the big guns in the women’s event cruised through.
• Sandy Harwitt offers a sobering perspective to the recent prize money increases by comparing how much first round losers will earn at Wimbledon -- $38,800 -- to the salaries of doctors and teachers.
Here’s some numbers from the California Department of Education from 2012. The average starting salary of a elementary school teacher in California is $38,625 to $41,246. Yes, a new elementary school teacher could only be making a couple of thousand dollars more for the year than a first-round loser at Wimbledon this year. If that doesn’t seem crazy to anyone out there than I’m just missing it.
It is reported that the average starting teaching salary in New York is $44,370 and can go up through the years to $72,708. In Kentucky, the average teacher starting salary is reported to be $35,075 and can go up to $48,908. In Montana, the average teacher starting salary is $26,734 and can go up to $47,132.
Oh, and as for the doctors, a U.S. internist (general medicine) makes an average $189,014 a year. If you divide that salary by four (for four Grand Slams on the presumption that Wimbledon’s $35,800 is a general Grand Slam first round salary, the doctor is not much over that at $47,253 and they’re working all year long.
• Tim Henman calls on regular tour tournaments to increase prize money, not just the Slams.
“I still remember playing my first Challenger tournament in Hong Kong in 1990, and the prize fund was $50,000,” said Henman, speaking from a coaching clinic in Southampton where he was fulfilling his duties as an HSBC ambassador.
“Twenty-three years on, the Challenger tournaments are still paying exactly the same money that they were then. Players need to look at their own tours, which are run separately from the slams, and ask why they haven’t improved the funds on offer.
• From Foot Soldiers of Tennis, some insight into how the LTA funds its lower-ranked players in an interview with Britain's Ashley Hewitt.
• An old interview with Boyd Tinsley, violinist for The Dave Matthews Band, about his sponsorship of the Boyd Tinsley Women's Clay Court Classic, a $50,000 USTA Pro Circuit challenger that is underway this week.
• The International Tennis Hall of Fame is hosting a screening of the "Battle of the Sexes" on July 14th and Billie Jean King herself will be in attendance to provide insight and commentary.
• Serena Williams' official website got a makeover.
