OPINION | Why women's tennis MUST be increased to 5 sets at Slams: It's about merit

The time has come for women's tennis to be increased to five sets at Grand Slams, writes Nicolette Lategan.

Prepare for some disagreeable salvos after the newest and shiniest Aussie darling, Ash Barty, lifted the Daphne Ackhurst Memorial Cup last weekend, becoming the first Australian woman since 1978 to do so in an Australian Open women’s final.

A marvellous day for Australian patriotism. Another pretty average one for tennis viewers the world over.

It’s the Sunday fare in the men’s final they were licking their chops over and, once more, Rafa Nadal’s exploits have defied even the boundaries of language.

Before the Sunday final kicked off, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal stood at 20 titles apiece in the Grand Slam greatest of all time race. Certainly, the injured Federer and the acutely absent Djokovic, from his exiled sofa in the land of unvaccinated limbo, were tuned in for the battle for history in the men’s game as the Spaniard Nadal scuppered the Next Gen uprising in Russian iceman Daniil Medvedev.

The narrative is more complex, evolved, dynamic as the five-set size chapters unfold match to match, Slam to Slam, history to present day.

Five-set tennis allows us to know more of the character development and plot twists in one single men’s match of ebbs and flows, where any one of the aged top three of old can still abduct an upstart and fling them into galaxies unchartered.

There is no room for such complexities and depth of understanding in the three-set match.

Last Saturday’s women’s final was the perfect example. It’s over in the blink of an eye. It is the low cast ceiling of women’s sport in which there is no real test of the true nature of the Olympian athlete as told of in the museums of antiquity.

That