ROME — Behind dark glasses, his face dominated by a Fu Manchu mustache, Ion Tiriac betrays little emotion from his courtside seat at the Madrid Open, a tournament he owns. But when he speaks, he leaves little doubt about his views on tennis.
His tournament is one of three outside the Grand Slam events that pay male and female players equally, but in an interview in Madrid last week, he joined the dissent within tennis leadership on the topic of equal prize money.
“I like, very much more, women than men,” said Tiriac, a 76-year-old Romanian billionaire.