A Southpaw Debate
On Wimbledon's decision to ban Russian and Belarusian tennis players
Dear readers,
Some weeks, we have to go searching through the annals of the sports pages to find a topic to write about. Other weeks, an issue just falls into our lap. This week was one of those weeks, and the topic was obvious: Wimbledon’s decision to ban all Russian and Belarusian tennis players from this year’s tournament in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But as we put our heads together to decide what to say about the decision, we discovered something sort of unusual: we totally disagreed about whether or not Wimbledon had made the right call. Ian thought it was the smart decision; Calder thought it missed the mark. Most of the time, we’re able to reconcile our points of view and come to some sort of consensus, but not this time. So instead of writing one piece, we’re actually bringing you two: one by Ian, in defense of the decision, and one by Calder, critiquing it.
This isn’t a competition, of course, but—just kidding, yes it is. If you feel so moved, shoot us an email or leave a comment to tell us who you think outwitted the other. We’ll reveal the outcome next week. Happy reading.
-Calder + Ian
In defense of the Wimbledon ban
Ian Ward
I guess I’ve drawn the short straw of defending the decision of an institution whose decisions are frequently as capricious and they are dumb—but here we go.
Critics of Wimbledon’s decision have raised two major sets of questions about the tournament’s ban: First, is it fair? And second, is it effective?
To the first question: Is it fair, in some overarching moral sense, to punish individual athletes who may not even live in Russia, who do not materially support Putin’s regime, and who do not have a say in Russia’s foreign policy? No — of course it’s not. These Russian athletes didn’t start the war, and they certainly cannot stop it.
But I don’t think that’s the message that Wimbledon is sending with its decision. As I read it, Wimbledon is saying: Fairness be damned, let’s play the politics. It’s also not especially fair, for instance, that millions of Ukrainians have lost their livelihoods—and many of them their lives—because Putin is paranoid about a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels. So in the meantime, I’m okay with fighting unfairness with unfairness, as it were.
To the second question of the ban’s efficacy: We’re written before about “sportwashing”—the effort, a favorite tactic of Vladimir Putin, to use international sports competitions to launder Russia’s reputation on the global stage. Critics of Wimbledon’s ban have pointed out that the tournament could have protected against sportwashing by taking the more limited step of banning any signs of Russian nationalism—like the use of the flag or the playing of the national anthem—as other tournaments have done. But this strikes me as a sort of myopic way of looking at the problem. If Daniil Medvedev went on to win the tournament—as he very well could have—would anyone in the West suddenly forget that he’s a Russian superstar because he didn’t drape himself in the Russian flag? Would sports commentators really be able to disentangle his victory from what’s going on in Ukraine? Most importantly, would it really stop the Kremlin’s propagandists from spinning his victory as a symbolic victory for Russia?
No sane person believes that banning Russian athletes from Wimbledon will materially change the situation on the ground in Ukraine or meaningful change Putin’s calculus. But the point is to eliminate opportunities for the Kremlin to claim symbolic victories over the West through sports. Wimbledon seems to be recognizing the complex ways that sports can assist the ideological projects of authoritarian nations like Russia, and it is wielding its influence creatively—if somewhat arbitrarily—to push back against a violent authoritarian regime. That seems very much in the Southpaw spirit.
Probably the best criticism that I’ve heard of Wimbledon’s decision is that it plays into Putin’s hand by giving the impression that all of Russia is acting as a unified front and that ordinary Russians stand behind Putin’s campaign of military terror. (Thanks to tennis wiz Alex Kogan for bringing this to my attention.) But this merely invites the question: to whom is it giving this impression? Certainly not to people in the West, who, with a quick Google search have access to ample evidence of anti-war dissent in Russia. And certainly not to Russians themselves, who, if they haven’t already been brainwashed by Putin, are finding creative ways to hear from anti-war voices.
There’s more that could be said. Yes, there is a healthy dose of hypocrisy in the All England Club’s decision to condemn Russia for its imperial designs. Yes, it sucks for fans who just want to see the best tennis possible, geopolitics be damned. Yes, Wimbledon is overlooking other global atrocities.
But at the end of the day, I think it’s important to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s actually been affected by the war—say, of a Ukrainian migrant who’s been forced to take refuge somewhere in western Europe. Does that person really want to have to watch the All England Club shower awards on a Russian player who—like Medvedev—hasn’t even summoned up the courage to explicitly condemn the war? Asked for his thoughts on the war in March, Medvedev said, “It is very difficult in life to talk about what is right and what is wrong.” In life, yes. In this case, no. How would it feel for this imaginary Ukrainian refugee to watch this person lift a massive golden cup over their head to the applause of thousands? I imagine not great.
Some people who agree with me:
Sally Jenkins in The Washington Post
Against the Wimbledon ban
Calder McHugh
The All England Club has decided to ban Russian and Belarusian players from Wimbledon—one of tennis’ four grand slams. This will affect two of the mens’ top 32 players, including world no. 2 Daniil Medvedev, and six of the women’s top 32, including world no. 4 Aryna Sabalenka.
I am here to tell you why this is wrong.
Let’s begin with the case of national identity, which is the one that has been the most hotly debated throughout this particular cycle. There are essentially two schools of thought on this question. The first is that athletes are representatives of their country no matter where they play, especially if their country essentially “claims” them. Russian athletes, these takesters would have you believe, are particularly associated with their nation because Putin has made it a mission to equate the individual athletic achievements of Russian stars with national glory. The other side is that athletes are autonomous individuals, and that no matter what Putin says, many of them are barely connected with Russia—they live in Monaco to dodge taxes and train wherever the tournaments take place.
Though I see both sides of this one, I am more sympathetic to the latter argument, if only because I believe those of us who are anti-Putin need to counteract his propaganda with some of our own. In other words, if we want our athletes to be activists, or to speak out against war (which, by the way, both of us argued in Southpaw a couple of months ago), we have to adopt the posture that they are capable of doing so. That they are not simply symbolic pawns of the state to be pushed around, but that they are people who can choose what symbols they want to represent, if any at all.
More relevant and less discussed in our current thinkpiece cycle is that autocracy and human rights abuses are not confined to wartime, nor confined to Russia. The All England Club’s attempts to defend “Western” values are all the more ridiculous if we consider the centuries of England’s own colonial project, which continues today in their support of America’s foreign misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have reached a point, accelerated over the past two years, where corporations or organizations like the All England Club are choosing to “stand in solidarity” essentially at random. Were these sorts of organizations to be actual allies to the oppressed, they would necessarily cease to exist (do we really need to use all that water to keep the grass at the All England Club so pristine?).
So instead of hastening their own departure, we are left with corporate activism that rings increasingly hollow. No other tournament on the ATP tour is banning Russian and Belarusian players, and in fact the ATP has spoken up against the ban. Now Vladimir Putin has a decent talking point in a war without many of them. If one wants to argue that every time a country does something atrocious outside of its national borders its athletes should be banned from all competition, at least that is consistent. But it’s a complete counterfactual and it would at various times require a ban of essentially every successful sportsperson on the planet.
More to the point, we are not going to purity test our way out of our growing international problems. The All England Club originally teased that it would need to hear some sort of anti-Putin rhetoric in order to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate. When it realized this would be too complicated to legislate, it went ahead and just banned them all. We have a growing heap of interlocking issues that brass at the All England Club is ill-equipped to understand, let alone legislate.
Essentially every act of political courage that we remember on a field has come from athletes, not organizations. Let the kids play. Who knows what might happen.
Some people who agree with me:
Benjamin Hart in New York Magazine
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about. . .
. . . a firsthand account of abuse in women’s tennis? “Abuse of teenage players is still rife” by Pam Shriver in The Daily Telegraph (April 21, 2022).
. . . analysis of that account? “Hall Of Famer Pam Shriver Says Women’s Tennis Has Long Had An Abuse Problem” by Dave McKenna in Defector (April 22, 2022).
. . . more on the Larry Nassar case? “13 Nassar Abuse Victims Seek $10 Million Each From F.B.I.” by Christine Hauser in The New York Times (April 21, 2022).
The larger question for me is whether boycotts are a justified political tool in the abstract. A boycott of this kind is nothing more than open discrimination, and there is a tension in discriminating against people for something they don’t control, in this case nationality, to advance some aim compatible with justice, in this case stopping a war. At the very least, well-meaning liberals are confused on this topic. Why was it considered self-evidently justified to not employ someone simply because they were white South African, but not to do the same to someone today because they are Israeli? Why is it wrong to refuse to do business with someone because their gay but not to refuse to do business on the basis of nationality?
Great column.