There are not many ties in my wardrobe. The formal look has never been my style. However, I am entitled to wear two rather special ones if the mood takes me. One is striped purple and green, exclusive to members of the All England Club and given to me when I won the Wimbledon men’s singles title 20 years ago.

The other is almost as old, emblazoned with the head of a pig and presented to me by Martina Navratilova. She felt that my repeated demeaning comments about the standards of women’s tennis, and my insistence that any demands for parity in prize-money bordered on the ludicrous, qualified me as a full-blooded chauvinist.

I thought I had the last laugh by walking away with a winner’s cheque of £155,000 while Martina picked up only £139,500 for beating Steffi Graf in the women’s final in 1987. Admittedly, I’d won all but one of my seven matches in straight sets, as had Martina, but I was confident in the belief that I had worked much harder. After all, she had dropped only 15 games in the five matches she played before facing Chris Evert in the semi-final. Such a statistic, so I thought, said a lot for the depth of competition on the women’s Tour.

Time, however, mellows many an angry young man. Richard Krajicek took over my position at the top of the hate list among the feminist ranks when he referred to the majority of women professional players as “lazy fat pigs”. I have even been known to be complimentary about some women champions, and Martina and I now speak convivially on the rare occasions we meet.

I live happily in this age of political correctness, when the morally just get their way. Therefore, when the All England Club finally caved in to years of pressure last week, not just from the WTA Tour but also from the likes of the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, and opted for the quiet life by agreeing to equal prize-money, my immediate reaction was not to cause any ripples on our calm new pond.

Wasn’t it Tim Henman who revealed not too long ago that there was a marked difference between what he admitted publicly and what he honestly thought? So when I was asked for my reaction, I played the straight bat and muttered something about it being a morally sound decision based on fairness and social equality.

By and large, the response from the men’s locker rooms around the ATP Tour has been much the same. Do they believe what they are saying? Do they hell.

And after spending a couple of days wrestling with my conscience, can I hold my hands up and say: “Yes, I’m happy to stick with my right-on sentiments?” You’ve got to be kidding.

A lifetime in tennis has taught me that men need to be far fitter, work harder in their preparation, compete with much more intensity once they get out on the match court, show greater powers of endurance and play many more tough matches. And I would estimate that more than 95% of the male playing fraternity share the same opinion. Here’s the deal in everyday terms. What would a man think if he worked in an office next to a woman and she did 40% less work than he did and left a good hour earlier every day, but went home at the end of each week with the same amount of money in her pay packet? He would feel short-changed. That sentiment is held by most male tennis players.

I’m not a big advocate of women playing best-of-five-sets matches. It would not do much for the image of the sport. There are not many opening-round matches in the women’s draw of Grand Slam tournaments that I would cross the road to watch. Predictability has always put me off and things aren’t too different from 10 or 15 years ago.

Last summer, of the 64 women’s first-round matches played at Wimbledon, 45 were won in straight sets. And of those, 16 saw the loser win four games or fewer.

In the second round of 32 matches, 19 were won in straight sets, with almost half being extremely one-sided.

Is this any different from, say, 1991, when 41 first-round matches lasted two sets and 20 of those were pretty swift affairs? Don’t those figures suggest that women’s tennis is as shallow today as it was in my day? Of course there are some wonderful female players; few of the greats have moved around a court with such grace as Graf, and when you talk of sheer power and strength, Serena Williams has set new levels.

But look at some of the first-round losers playing on wild cards who get pitched out 6-0 6-1 in 34 minutes. Do they deserve to be paid the same amount as, say, Scotland’s Alan Mackin, who battled for four hours and 20 minutes against 18th seed Marcos Baghdatis last year before losing 6-2 in the fifth? If we are being honest, don’t we know the answer?

Women get a better deal in tennis than men. In the US there are far more college scholarships on offer to women, while much higher up the scale the moderate performer has the potential to earn much more than her worth. In that respect I agree with the sentiments of the Wimbledon chairman, Tim Phillips, who said Thursday’s announcement should encourage young women who wanted a career in sport to choose tennis as their best option.

I am in the fortunate position of being able to host guests at Wimbledon each year, but many times I have told friends that I’ve got them tickets for women’s quarter-finals and they ask if there is a chance of swapping them for a day when there are some good men’s matches. Not that I mix in those circles, but I would be surprised if the ticket touts don’t do much better business when the big guys are playing. Isn’t that what is known as market forces?

One point conveniently forgotten in the past few days is that when the US Open became the first to announce equal prize-money, Virginia Slims, who sponsored the women’s Tour, made up the deficit. In these days of political correctness, I wonder what would be said if a cigarette company tried to do that today.