When golfers earn more than tennis players, Djokovic is right to say there’s a problem

Djokovic’s final gift to the game could lie in establishment of PTPA, which is considering a legal challenge to very foundations of tennis

Should the Professional Tennis Players Association achieve its stated ambition – which is to help more pros earn a viable living – this will add another cubit to the legend of its co-founder Novak Djokovic.
Already a multi-millionaire – at the very least – Djokovic is not the sort of player who needs a rethink of the whole ecosystem. Everything has worked out pretty well for him, and rightly so.
No, it’s the tennis mortals who could use a helping hand. The men and women who can’t point to a roomful of trophies. And it’s to Djokovic’s great credit that he took an interest in their plight, despite his own position as part of tennis’s Mount Rushmore.
“We all definitely want to see a change at the base level because the 150th player on the planet struggles,” Djokovic said last year, when asked about the PTPA’s mission. “People don’t realise how expensive this sport is.”
In the twilight of his years as an active athlete, Djokovic’s final gift to the game could lie in the establishment of the PTPA, which is considering a legal challenge to the very foundations of the world tour.
Some sort of jolt is urgently required, because tennis exists in a state of paralysis. We hear the same complaints every year: warring factions, short-sighted governance, lack of vision. Now, in PTPA chief executive Ahmad Nassar, the sport has found a man prepared to call a spade a spade – or rather a racket a racket.
As Nassar told Telegraph Sport on Wednesday, “The system is so biased against the players, as well as sub-optimal for fans and media and other commercial partners … I’m asking for a 10-year plan, because tennis needs a revamp and nobody seems to have an answer for where we are going next.”
The clamour for change grows louder with each passing season. Matches grow longer, injuries accumulate and players look even more frazzled than they did the year before. This is a game which grinds down its labour force as inexorably as a labrador chewing an old tennis ball.
The most obvious comparison is with golf. Last year, there were 10 golfers among the world’s 100 best-paid sportspeople, according to a list compiled by Sportico, and only two tennis players: Carlos Alcaraz and Djokovic himself.
The disparity extends all the way down the pyramid, even though each of the four tennis slams each earns more than any individual golf event. Meanwhile, tennis exerts a far greater physical toll than the stationary game of golf, leaving almost every veteran with shot joints and a gigantic chiropractic bill.
If anyone has risen above the strain, it is Djokovic, who still looks fresh and pliable at the age of 37. In an echo of his great rival Roger Federer, he soaks up the impact of the tour like a giant shock absorber. Which makes it all the more admirable that he has invested time in this project. Despite his privileged position, Djokovic chose not to “come off as a gentleman and burn the rest” – which is exactly what Rafael Nadal once accused Federer of, in a rare and telling moment of public discord.
Nadal made that waspish remark in 2012: a moment when he was part of the ATP player council, and was campaigning for a shorter season, yet could not get Federer to agree with him. He stood down a couple of months later, having discovered how difficult it is to change this convoluted system from within.
With the formation of the PTPA, Djokovic took a more strategic route. He knew that the ATP is supposed to be a 50-50 balance between the interests of the tournaments and the players. But he also appreciated that this never works out as a fair deal. The players are too busy hitting tennis balls to pore over financial accounts or build political alliances. The vast majority never went to school.
It has made sense, then, to create an independent body led by professionals such as Nassar: a man with two decades’ experience of representing athletes’ interests in a variety of sports, including the behemoth that is American Football.
Admittedly, it has taken a while to get here. We are now four years on from the PTPA’s first high-profile meeting, which showed 60-odd players wearing pandemic-era facemasks on Grandstand. Even now, they have not been officially recognised by any of the other tennis acronyms – the WTA, ATP, USTA and so on.
Still, as Nassar consults with legal advisers over ways to improve his members’ lot, the function of the organisation is becoming clearer. Federer left us with the Laver Cup exhibition event, and Nadal has created a series of academies. At this rate, Djokovic’s practical legacy will run deeper than either.