Only 5% of women's players at Wimbledon have a female coach and the WTA is looking to change that

Fox News Flash top sports headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.

On the day of the Wimbledon singles draw, Billie Jean King and other founding members of the women’s professional tennis tour gathered 5 miles away at a London hotel to mark the 50th anniversary of a meeting that led to the formation of today’s WTA.

That long-ago moment was prompted by frustration at being paid far less in prize money than the sport’s male athletes. For all of the progress since in that area, there remains an aspect of tennis in which gender equity is nowhere near being achieved: coaching.

Of the 128 women in the singles bracket at Wimbledon, which ends this weekend, just six work with a female coach — roughly 5%. All of the coaches for men were men.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Lan Yao-Gallop and coach Mark Gellard, center, watch as Magda Linette prepares to serve on a practice court at the Charleston Open tennis tournament in Charleston, S.C., Monday, April 3, 2023. Yao-Gallop is a member of the women’s professional tennis tour’s Coach Inclusion Program to develop female coaches.  (AP Photo/Mic Smith)

"Terrible. Extremely disappointing," King, the International Tennis Hall of Fame member and rights advocate, told The Associated Press when asked about the scarcity of female coaches. "It’s about society, absolutely. You have to see it to be it. So if you don’t see a woman up there as a coach, it doesn’t even cross your brain. How do we get the top players to hire them? We’ve got to solve the problem."

King and others in the sport consider that a reflection of the same sort of entrenched bias that has prevented women from advancing in all manner of other fields — and the WTA is making