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The Hopman Cup returns to the tennis calendar in 2022 to advance gender equality

David Haggerty, president of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), during a photo session in Tokyo REUTERS / Mike Segar

When you start watching tennis or playing it, its rules are not easy to understand. What’s that about counting from 15 to 30 and then to 40? What is that tie break? But you learn. It is much more complex, however, to understand the distribution of power in tennis, a fragmented sport in which your federation does not have the power of FIFA or World Athletics, even if it owns some jewels. Three, and he is about to regain a fourth that he had lost.

“We want to bring the Hopman Cup back in 2022 because we love that men and women play together in an event,” said the president of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), David Haggerty, in an interview with Around the Rings in Tokyo. “Most likely it will be in Europe. In the next two weeks we will announce a decision ”.

Haggerty, former president of the United States Tennis Federation (USTA), has been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since January 2020. Normality has been the exception since then, but the ITF president is confident that in Paris 2024 things are different: that’s why he wants an 11-day tournament, instead of the nine in Tokyo that his good discussions with Novak Djokovic cost him.

The world’s number one finally understood the ITF, says Haggerty, who doesn’t think the Serbian-created PTPA (Professional Tennis Players Association) is a problem for him: “It’s probably more of a discussion between ATP and PTPA in this moment, and maybe also the WTA ”.

– The Olympic tennis tournament is coming to an end, what balance do you make?

– It has been good, we have a great venue here with the Ariake Tennis Park. We have ATP and WTA tournaments here, we have had the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup. Players know it and like it. The competition has been great. The challenge is that we have nine days to play five events and we have almost 200 players. The schedule for the first two days, with 48 games every day, 12 courts with four games a day … It can be a very long day. We are excited, now we have the medal round.

– Triathlon added a mixed competition, has the IOC ever commented that mixed doubles are too much in tennis?

– No, in fact the opposite. When we added the mixed doubles it was great. Tennis was one of the first sports in which there was a balance between men and women, which is very important for the IOC, with Agenda 2020 and now 2020 + 5. So the IOC was very happy when we added mixed doubles in London. What we need are probably two more days, eleven days that would allow us to play the entire competition and give the players a little more rest in between.

– Do the players want that?

– Actually, the players do. The players have talked to us, and they understand the five events, they all want to play singles and doubles, and a lot of them want to play mixed doubles. They understand, from a scheduling point of view, that if we had two more days, the situation would be easier.

– Who is preventing it, the IOC, the ATP and the WTA …?

– The IOC supports us. We have to plan now for Paris and see what to do and on the day of the events, we have to talk to the different stakeholders and to the tours as well. The venue is going to be Roland Garros, a great venue.

– Are you waiting 11 days for Paris instead of nine like here in Tokyo?

– I don’t know, but it seems that it is what the players are talking about and requesting, it would be something that we have to strongly consider.

– Have you had any contact with Novak Djokovic these days in Tokyo?

– Of course. With other players and with the captains as well.

– In fact, Djokovic has already behaved like the head of the tennis union here, pressing for the start of the day to be changed from 11.00 to 15.00. How hard was it?

– We met with Novak, we had always thought about having a later start, but when you have so many games at the beginning, if you fall behind it becomes a challenge. We had to get the first four days of competition. We have 48 games the first two days, then 36 the third day and 24 the fourth. Once you get over that … And if you remember, a typhoon was forecast on Monday and it looked like it was going to rain for us for two days. And if that had been the case, we would have to extend the end (of the tournament). We communicate with the captains and we also speak with Novak. He understood the complexity of the challenge and I think everyone was happy, including us, that we wanted to get there at three in the afternoon anyway.

– But Djokovic said that he would have liked the start at 3 in the afternoon to have been from the beginning.

– It wouldn’t have been possible.

– Did you understand this in the conversation? Because in public he said something different.

– I think that understanding is one thing and agreeing may be another. But we have to remember that Tokyo is in a state of emergency. We were supposed to finish at eleven. If we had started at three in the afternoon the first days, we would have finished at twenty past two in the morning, and that is not possible. It should also be noted that there are more than 330 medal events, of which tennis is one. We have to involve the OBS, the broadcasters, the IOC, the Tokyo organization. We have 800 employees and volunteers on site. If the schedule changes, you have to consider transportation, and many of the volunteers have to go home, and there are curfews. These are all complexities to work on, and we did the best we could.

Serbian Novak Djokovic reacts during his semi-final match against German Alexander Zverev REUTERS / Mike Segar
Serbian Novak Djokovic reacts during his semi-final match against German Alexander Zverev REUTERS / Mike Segar

– When you see the venue and the size of the stadiums, does it not occur to you that the presence of some spectators would have been possible?

– We have to respect what the Tokyo government wants. They are concerned, and covid cases have increased in recent days. We have to be very respectful of that. Having some spectators is good for the players, but we have to be respectful to the people of Japan.

– You started as a member of the IOC in January 2020, and since then nothing has been normal …

– Is right. January 2020 was my first session of the IOC, when I became a member, and this was the first in-person session since then.

– What do you see inside the IOC? What surprises you, what surprises you …?

– It is a great honor to be a member of the IOC, it allows you to see beyond your sport, to see the complexity of managing a world competition like this. I have a lot of admiration for Thomas Bach, for having been able to go through the most difficult moments of the covid crisis and successfully organize the Tokyo Olympics. I think we have learned that we have to communicate more, we have had a few informal sessions from IOC members, which have been helpful in communicating.

– Now you have the Davis Cup in three venues: Madrid, Turin and Innsbruck. Why and what do you expect with this division of venues?

– We think the 2019 Davis Cup finals were fantastic, but there were some things we wanted to change. The first was the calendar, we had seven days and the calendar was too compact. So we went on to eleven days, dividing up the competition. And the other thing we wanted to have was that home and away feeling that is always so important to the competition, by going to three different venues, it allows us to have that home and away element with the group stage.

– Was Euro 2020 in 12 countries some kind of inspiration?

– It’s something we’ve been talking about for over a year. How can we improve the experience? We have worked on it, we have studied other competitions, even the Eurocup, but this was on the table long before.

– From what I know, they have high expectations with the return of the Hopman Cup.

– For 25 years we had a great event in Perth. We want to get it back because we love it when men and women play together at an event. It is something that is going to be on the calendar again in 2022, we are working with several different companies and we are close to making an announcement about it. There are several options, but it is most likely in Europe. We will announce a decision in the next two weeks.

– How will the reintroduction of the Hopman Cup into the 2022 calendar deal with different tennis stakeholders?

– All this is part of the process that we are living now. Whenever the calendar is discussed, it is a difficult conversation, because nobody wants anything to change.

Serena Williams and Roger Federer during a benefit tennis event
Serena Williams and Roger Federer during a benefit tennis event

– Why does tennis need a Hopman Cup?

– It has always been a way for players to start the year, to guarantee three games in their first competition. In the last edition of the Hopman Cup we had Roger and Serena, who had never faced each other. And there was a packed stadium, completely packed, almost 23,000 people. The average tennis player plays more doubles than singles. The social aspect of mixed doubles, men and women, seems to us to make a lot of sense.

– There is no world ranking for mixed doubles, shouldn’t there be one, perhaps promoted by the ITF?

– It’s a good suggestion, something we could study.

– How does the PTPA affect the ITF?

– The ITF always wants to have good relations with the players and also with the tournaments. We have a good relationship with Novak, we work closely with the ATP and the WTA. It’s probably more of a discussion between the ATP and the PTPA right now, and maybe with the WTA as well.

– For years, the Federation Cup, the Fed Cup, was a competition that did not work, and its name was apparently a small part of the problem. You now have the Billie Jean King Cup, was it very difficult for you to change the name?

– It was pretty easy once we thought about it. We have an icon in Billie Jean King, who has changed the sport so much. Equality between men and women and she is a great athlete. And there was no other world championship, a world event like the Fed Cup that was named after a woman. Billie Jan has been an ambassador for us and was thrilled and honored that the board of directors considered and approved it. It shows the dedication that we have towards gender equality, the vision that we have that the Billie Jean King Cup is the same as the Davis Cup, with the same kind of history and heritage. It is not as old as the Davis Cup competition, but we want to have that prestige.

– From time to time the debate about a change of rules in tennis comes to light. Are you debating any new rules now?

– We believe that it is part of our responsibility. In junior tournaments we are experimenting with no let. The ball touches the net on service and continues to play. And this is something that American college tennis has been doing for many, many years. Speed ​​up the game, eliminate any controversy. It could be very exciting. Perhaps the one serve suggestion, although I don’t think we’re ready for that yet. We have to try things. If it works, we pass it on to the professional circuits.

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