Tennis
After mulling a proposal from the leaders of the men’s and women’s tennis tours to restructure the sport, the people in charge of the four Grand Slams have sent back a terse rejection that leaves the sport’s future in a state of paralysis.
On March 16, Andrea Gaudenzi, the ATP chair, and Steve Simon, his counterpart on the WTA, sent Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens a 23-page deck. It outlined a new governing structure for tennis, a streamlined calendar of tournaments, improved pay for the players and a plan to fund it all. It would cut the number of ATP and WTA tournaments, including the four Grand Slams, from 118 to somewhere around 75.
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The leaders of the Grand Slams sent their response hours after The Athletic reported the contents of Gaudenzi’s and Simon’s proposal.
“Whilst we appreciate the time and effort you have put in to articulating your position, it fails to adequately address the essential issues we have repeatedly raised,” a one-page, eight-paragraph letter, sent to the chairmen of the men’s ATP and women’s WTA Tours and reviewed by The Athletic, said.
A representative of the men’s tour declined to comment on the letter; a representative of the women’s tour did not respond to a request for comment.
A person briefed on the Grand Slams’ response and their meetings with the tours over the past year, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, described the proposal as “essentially no different to what we have already.”
“When the tours say it’s on the table today that’s simply not true, because the tours can’t make the changes needed because of the governance issues that exist. It’s essentially just making governance challenges everyone’s problem,” they said.
The Athletic contacted the representatives of the men’s and women’s tours for comment on these claims.
“We share your disappointment that more progress has not been made in addressing the significant long-term challenges and opportunities facing professional tennis,” the Slams’ letter said.
It then reasserted the Grand Slams’ desire to pursue an even more streamlined calendar of elite tournaments, in a bid to attract more fans and sponsors to bring more money into the sport. That product, centered on around 30 events — the men’s and women’s singles in their four tournaments and ten further events on the men’s and women’s side per year — formed the “premium tour” that the Grand Slams proposed to the ATP and WTA last year. It never went further than discussions.
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The tours’ new proposal includes that structure, which would rely on the ATP and WTA 1,000 events, named for the ranking points they award to their winners. But it also includes 16 ATP 500 and 17 WTA 500 tournaments, as well as an undisclosed number of 250-level tournaments.
The Grand Slams see this as flying in the face of creating a less-muddled and taxing schedule that they believe will be easier for fans to follow (and will give their events even more primacy). They added that it does not permit an off-season long enough to allow players to recover properly; they are pushing for that downtime to be eight weeks.
“This is not a speculative position – it is grounded in solid, data-driven analysis which we have all gone through together,” the letter states.
The back-and-forth comes at a fraught time for tennis. On, Tuesday, the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), the organization co-founded by 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, labeled the biggest governing bodies in tennis as a “cartel” which suppresses wages, player opportunity and rival tournaments “to the harm of players and fans alike,” in an antitrust lawsuit filed in New York City, London and Brussels.
The organization named the men’s ATP and women’s WTA tours, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) as defendants, threatens to overturn the fundamental structure of one of the most popular global sports.
The tours and the Grand Slams have spent most of the past year speaking several times a month. Now it appears they are as far apart as ever.
“The change needed in our sport must begin with a vision for bold and concrete product reform,” the Grand Slams’ letter said.
“Until you feel able to commit to a vision and a plan with respect to these core issues it is difficult to see how our discussions can continue. Should your position change, our door remains open.”
(Photo: Vincent Thian / Associated Press)
Matthew Futterman is an award-winning veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.”Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently writing a book about tennis, “The Cruelest Game: Agony, Ecstasy and Near Death Experiences on the Pro Tennis Tour,” to be published by Doubleday in 2026. Follow Matthew on Twitter @mattfutterman
