Fasten your seatbelts because turbulence is coming in the world of tenniss. As if the sport of racket were missing some ingredient in its cocktail shaker – with the players constantly complaining about the calendar and the balls, with Novak Djokovic setting up a union, with the women’s circuit dying… -, this Tuesday it became known that The four Grand Slams prepare a hit on the table. A plan that if carried out would revolutionize the sport as we know it today.
‘The Athletic’ has published that the big four, that is, The Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open have been considering the creation of a premium circuit for months that would include those four events and ten other major events.. All of that would remain under her umbrella, while the ATP and the WTA would be left with crumbs.
To understand the movement, first it is necessary know how tennis politics workswhere there are too many mouths. On the one hand there is the International Tennis Federation (ITF), which is in charge of organizing the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup, in addition to helping with the Grand Slams; then this the ATPthe entity that governs the men’s circuit; at the WTA, similar but in the women’s circuit; and on the other hand they are the four Grand Slamswho are the kings of mambo.
In case everything is already too complicated, To this amalgamation of acronyms we must add those of the PTPA a few months agoDjokovic’s new union that is increasingly gaining more followers in the halls of tennis.
Each of these associations mentioned, except the PTPA, negotiates television rights individually, which creates a lot of inequality. “85% of the profits in tennis go to the Grand Slams, they are the ones that make almost all the money in this sport. The rest, 15%, is for ATP and WTA“said Spanish Pablo Andújar to Relevo a few months ago, since January a member of the ATP Board of Directors, the highest body of the association.
The threat from Saudi Arabia
Having this clear, What the four Grand Slams want is to form a common association that absorbs the best tournaments currently organized by the ATP and WTA. We would be talking about the Masters 1000. Events in the 500 or lower category would continue to be in the hands of the men’s and women’s circuits, as The Athletic explains in its extensive article.
The 100 best in each circuit would focus on the four Grand Slams and the other ten events and they would also have a guaranteed salary. The rest of the tournaments would be optional for the best players. That would allow the calendar to be slimmed down, one of the great demands of tennis players today.
“This movement comes after the most powerful entities in the sport, the executives and the best players have accepted that tennis in its current form does not work as well as it should,” indicates the North American media. According to The Athletic, Senior tennis leaders fear that in the delicate situation that the sport is going through, an external actor could appear and turn everything upside down, as has happened with Saudi Arabia and the golf circuit.. “Avoiding a similar turn of events has become a priority.”
Saudi Arabia is hosting these days the ATP Next Gen Finals, the tournament that brings together the eight best under-21 players in the world, and is negotiating with the men’s circuit the possibility of having a Masters 1000 in the future in January before the Australian Open. That, logically, would be a very hard blow for the Australian Federation, organizer of the Open and many previous tournaments.
At the moment There is no official proposal on the four Grand Slam plan. The last meetings in this regard were held in mid-November in Turin during the ATP Finals. If everything goes as planned, the organizers of the big four should have the plan ready for the Australian Open January, although that does not mean that it will be carried out immediately
“Probably It would take one or two years to start the changes and even longer for them to be fully implemented.“, notes The Athletic. In fact, the media goes so far as to say that several sources consulted assure that there is “a significant possibility” that this will not come to fruition. However, The fact that there is a plan already shows that the board is going to move. Imminent earthquake.
Nacho Encabo is a sports editor at Relevo, a specialist in tennis and the Olympic Games. Born in Madrid, he studied Journalism and Audiovisual Communication at the Rey Juan Carlos University and began as an intern in the sports section of El Mundo in 2011. Knowing German shortly after opened the doors of the dpa agency, where he worked as a special envoy to the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, the 2016 Euro Cup in France and the 2018 World Cup in Russia. In addition, adding Relay and the rest of his career, he has covered the four tennis Grand Slams, the Davis Cup , athletics world championships, Formula 1 Grand Prix and countless LaLiga and Champions League matches. He has also worked as a reporter at El Independiente and traveled to the Tokyo Olympics on the Spanish Olympic Committee team. …
2023-11-28 21:16:59
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