Because I'm worth it ... Maria Sharapova in action at Wimbledon. And Sharapova found support from fellow former world number one Serena Williams, a four-time Wimbledon champion, who told Simon he was fighting a losing battle. "She's way hotter than he is, so more people will watch Maria," said Williams. Sharapova was playing on Court One on Thursday while Williams was on Centre Court, taking just an hour to beat Melinda Czink. In contrast, 13th seed Simon was out on Court Three, losing in straight sets to Xavier Malisse in his second round match.

'Way hotter than he is' ... Frenchman Gilles Simon. But Simon remained unapologetic. "I'm pretty sure they're thinking the same way as me," said of the other men at Wimbledon. "Maybe they can't say it; maybe they won't; maybe they will lose, I don't know, $2 million on the contracts if they say that . . . The conversation for sure I had it in the locker room and for sure they agree with me. Trust me. "It's a general thing. It's just not my point of view. It's just the public point of view. Just about the tournaments also, the sponsors. "You can ask everybody. Not so many will answer because, as I said, it's difficult to talk about it. But it's just like this. I mean, when that Shakira is singing, she is winning more money than most of the men because everybody want to see her. That's it.

She's way hotter than he is, so more people will watch Maria. "It has nothing to do with men and women. In life in general, of course, I'm for (equality). Tomorrow, if we can answer, if women's tennis is more interesting than men's tennis, if the price of the woman's final is higher than the price of the men's final, they will deserve to win more money than us. That's just the way it works. This is nothing new." Simon stressed that it was about the quality of the entertainment, not the length, insisting he had never argued for women to play best-of-five sets at the grand slams in order to be deserving of parity. Malisse admitted he shared Simon's opinion, but said that, publicly, he'd "rather not get into it". Others, such as Roger Federer, have also sidestepped the sensitive issue, and the women have come out strongly in self-defence. The previous day, Australia's Sam Stosur labelled it as "the debate that's never gonna finish", but claimed women deserved equal prize money at the grand slams.

"I think people come out and watch us play because they want to watch us play. I think there are a bunch of men's matches that go five (sets) that are pretty boring to watch, as well. It's not like a best-of-five match is better than a best of three, I don't think." In 2007, Wimbledon became the last of the four Grand Slam tournaments to award equal prize money; the US Open was the first in 1973. While the men and women have separate tours, there are several other "joint" events, including the recently-combined Italian Open in Rome. “The year before, the women, for their final, they had 20 spectators,” Simon said. “And so, in that case, you save them, but when you want a practice court, there aren't any left.” Roddick said it should not be considered an issue of gender, or sexism. "I'm sure there's a way to figure out who people are coming to watch. I'm sure there's TV ratings to look at. I'm sure there are ample numbers out there to dissect. As any business goes, you look at those numbers and then decide where it goes from there.

"I don't know what they are, but I'm sure as journalists they're out there. If this is an important story, I'm sure you guys can figure it out. It doesn't matter who has an opinion, because I guarantee you, both sides, men and women, we're going to be extremely biased towards our own product. So I'm sure there are better ways to look at it from an unbiased perspective. Loading "A lot of what I heard Gilles saying was, basically, he's proud of the product that the guys put out there. I'm sure he could have gone about it in maybe a not-so-forward way. But in the same token, I saw the responses. They're like, 'he needs to shut up or he needs to wake up earlier'. If it was said the other way around, I feel like that would have been a massive blowup." - with AFP