LThe tennis players have been summoned this Thursday, as MARCA has learned, to an emergency meeting via Zoom by the ATP to discuss the new dates of the Australian Open and to know from the mouth of the racket professionals the predisposition to a hard a journey in which many rules will have to be met but with a lot of money at stake.
The members of the Players Council have been in charge of sounding the opinion of their professional colleagues for the last two days. Today it has been the tennis players who have spoken directly among themselves and there is a division of opinions But, right now, if a vote were to take place, the supporters of playing the Australian Open would win, no matter how hard the bubble they are going to be subjected to and have to be escorted by the local police.
Many players emphasize the prize pool. Just for playing the first ‘Grand Slam’ the amount of 100,000 Australian dollars is already entered, which in exchange is 60,000 euros. A player outside the ‘top50’ does not win that money in months, beyond the fact that it is not known what the economic endowment of many tournaments will be in 2021 that will lower their prizes due to the pandemic.
The best example is Sardinia, an Open 250 where the champion, who was the Serbian Djere, only took 12,000 euros. Tennis Australia wanted to emphasize to the players that it is not they who set the rules but the Government of their country. There has also been talk of the previous phase and the option of not gambling and having financial compensation for those affected is increasingly gaining strength, something that the USTA has already done with the US Open qualy.
Many have asked about the facilities on the flights since the organization will charter flights for the players but initially they would be in ‘economy’ and not in ‘business’. The meetings with Tennis Australia will be permanent until early next week it is known in detail how the tour of the antipodes and the tournament that is placed before the Open that could even be the ATP Cup.
The informative meeting that the members of the men’s circuit have had today will be repeated tomorrow but with the players that make up the WTA.
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