The champions of professional tennis have some big plans. It's for their wallets, it's for their power across the sport, and it's for a group of top players who already enjoy a fairly comfortable life on tour.
Is it a big deal for fans? Is it a big deal for players trying to break into the top 100? Is tennis in general important as a sport with a strong following around the world?
That remains to be seen, but there is every reason to be skeptical about the way the Grand Slam tournaments seek to dominate the entire tennis calendar.
As The Athletic reported on Tuesday, there will be more to come this week to coincide with the tournament in Madrid, as Grand Slam leaders try to sell their idea of the future of tennis to players and agents. It is said that many meetings will be held.
And it will definitely be a compelling vision. The creation of a premium tour centered around the four Grand Slams and 10 big events around the world, with fewer tournaments, a longer off-season and more funding, including equal pay for men and women.
On the surface it sounds great. Who wouldn't want to work less in order to get a better salary? If you pool the media rights of the world's four major tournaments (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open) with Saudi Arabia's investment, you can definitely create a great event that will make top players millionaires without asking anyone. you can make it. They spend more than 25 weeks a year crushing bodies and roaming the world, cashing checks and collecting ranking points.
In other words, you can build a tennis version of F1.
However, there is one major problem with this theory. That's because tennis is not F1. Tennis is a sport where weekly rankings create opportunities or challenges. This is a sport where fortunes ebb and flow, and where someone like American journeyman Chris Eubanks could be life-changing, as he spent a heated few weeks on the grass last summer. It's a sport where you eat what you kill and get what you deserve. It is a sport that has created future champions just by having tournaments around the world.
Is that all about to change?
Details are still lacking. But with one team winning four Grand Slams and another winning the ATP/WTA Tour, there is no doubt that a major change is occurring in the structure of tennis.
Until now, all slam tournaments have operated as independent organizations. They occasionally collaborate on some issues, but each owns his two-week spot on the calendar and the huge income they generate, but little else. Although the ATP and WTA sanction weekly tournaments that make up the tour schedule and sell media rights as part of a combined package, each event is independently owned and operated when it comes to ticket sales and specific sponsorships. has been done.
Last week, for example, a small men's tournament was held in Bucharest, Romania. It was held in Barcelona and Munich, Spain, and women's tournaments were held in Stuttgart, Germany, and Rouen, France. On the surface, this doesn't make much sense. Why would Munich and Barcelona compete for the top players instead of a bigger tournament competing for bigger prizes on the same field?
That's a fair point! And that's exactly the question golf is currently grappling with, thanks to LIV Golf poaching some of the world's top players from the PGA Tour and DP World Tour. All sports are better when the best players play their best as often as possible.
But on the Grand Slam-owned and operated premium tour, the truly important tennis only takes place 14 times a year, according to reports. Essentially all other tournaments have become part of a developing league with no real incentive for top players to participate.
And that's a potential disaster for tennis as a whole.
can't believe it? Let's hear from Roger Federer. He is famous for volunteering to be a ball boy for the Swiss Indoors. The tournament featured all the Wimbledon champions he had admired since childhood, including Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg and Michael Stich.
“I got to see firsthand how the best players in the world prepare, how they sweat, how they handle pressure,” he said in a 2017 Tennis TV interview. Ta. “Deep down, I’m always going to be a ball boy.”
Will Federer become Federer if the ATP tournament is not held in his hometown of Basel?
Maybe that's too dramatic. But on the premium tour organized by Grand Slam, tournaments from Charleston, South Carolina to Washington, D.C., from Rio de Janeiro to Guadalajara, Mexico, and from Rotterdam, Netherlands to Vienna, become essentially meaningless.
Do those tournaments always attract the best players? But these are big local events that players love, sell big tickets, and put tennis at the center of the market every year.
What is the purpose of telling fans that those tournaments don't matter anymore? How will that grow the game?
Some of the ideas behind premium tours are solid. Equal prize money, which exists in Grand Slam tournaments but not in other tournaments, should be a priority. Fans would benefit from more TV exposure than the current patchwork of tennis media rights. Knowing when and where big stars will appear is helpful for sponsors and ticket buyers.
But when the four Grand Slams take control of the sport and marginalize all but the 14 biggest tournaments, the sport becomes rigid. The path to developing new stars, increasing interest at the grassroots level and giving young prospects a chance to advance has become more complex.
Is it worth lining the pockets of dozens of players at the top of the sport and the tournament itself? That's the question at the heart of tennis' underground civil war. At this point, no one knows how it will turn out.
