A day after making controversial remarks about female tennis players and the WTA, Raymond Moore has stepped down as CEO and tournament director of the BNP Paribas Open.
BNP Paribas Open owner Larry Ellison said he spoke with Moore on Monday, and that Moore resigned effective immediately, adding, "I fully understand his decision."
Ellison had more to stay in a statement:
Nearly half a century ago, Billie Jean King began her historic campaign for the equal treatment of women in tennis. What followed is an ongoing, multi-generational, progressive movement to treat women and men in sports equally. Thanks to the leadership of Billie Jean, Martina Navratilova, Venus Williams, Serena Williams and so many other great women athletes, an important measure of success has already been achieved. I'm proud to say that it is now a decade long tradition at our tournament at Indian Wells, and all the major tennis tournaments, to pay equal prize money to both the women and the men.
I would like to personally thank all the great women athletes who fought so hard for so many years in the pursuit of equal prize money in professional tennis. And I'd like to congratulate them on their success. All of us here at the BNP Paribas Open promise to continue working with everyone to make tennis a better sport for everybody.
Moore made the following comments on Monday to the media:
When I come back in my next life I want to be someone in the WTA because they ride on the coattails of the men. They don't make any decisions and they are lucky. They are very, very lucky. If I was a lady player, I'd go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born because they have carried this sport. They really have.
Serena Williams called the remarks "very much mistaken and very, very, very inaccurate." Moore later apologized, saying his comments were "in extremely poor taste and erroneous."
