There is a lot of turbulence in world tennis at the moment, there is a lot of haggling about tournaments and dates. The call of money is everywhere – and there is a small war between the world association and the ATP.
At first glance, everything seems like it always does at the big final tournament, which ends the season in the travelling circus of the tennis pros. Almost 40,000 fans make a daily pilgrimage to London’s O2 Arena, to the ATP World Championships, to the performances of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev and their competitors for the last tour trophy of the year.
But at the same time, the tennis scene these days is wildly in motion, rather in turmoil, in a series of games in which the Davis Cup in its traditional form was simply buried. Behind the scenes of the industry there is a fight for dates and tournaments, old coalitions and friendships are broken – often you get the impression that there are hardly any loyalties left.
The influence and importance of previously central markets is also disappearing, and the ATP final itself is affected by this. The tennis festival in November, the performance of the eight best players of the season, has never been more successful than in the English capital, and yet the ATP will leave London with the deadline of 2021. And like so many others in the sports business, they follow the call of the big money to Asia or Arabia. Shanghai and Singapore have already taken up the position of successor candidates, but according to reports metropolises such as Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, are also interested.
Hardly any of the players welcomes this literal change of direction, even now most professional players torment themselves rather reluctantly in autumn into the so-called growth markets to Asia. But the checks waving to the tennis organizations are too tempting, the women’s union had already made it. Their final tournament, the WTA Finals, was just transferred to the Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen for a full ten years. The participants can look forward to fabulous prize money of 14 million dollars, which was the sum paid out to 128 women at a Grand Slam tournament some time ago.
How fragmented and uncoordinated world tennis organises its schedule, how much the interest groups work against each other, is shown by the small example of the last weekend alone. While the first group matches of the ATP World Championship took place in London on Sunday, the women fought for the Fed Cup overall victory in Prague at the same time.
This collision of dates is not new, this does not make the matter any better. Of course, the time overlap just in 2018 seems like a reflection of the confrontation that occurred between the ITF, the world tennis federation responsible for the Fed Cup, and the men’s union ATP. The motto, however, is an ancient, familiar one: Everyone fights for himself – and in case of doubt against everyone else. It is what one top player once called the “Balkanisation of this sport”.
According to the current decision, things would become quite chaotic in men’s tennis by the end of next year. After the ATP finals in London, many players would go back to the Davis Cup final in Madrid, not necessarily all of the elite, but still enough to make the premiere look reasonably respectable. But in the new year 2020 the next team competition would follow, a new edition of the team world championship of the ATP, in the starting phase of the season in Australia. Of course the whole thing makes no sense, especially not in view of the dramatically high physical demands made on the players in the meantime.
But none of the parties wants to give in either, at least not so far. And so both tournaments will probably take place, with which players and stars ever. But Zverev, the German top man, will certainly stay away from the Davis Cup when it is decided in November. “We already play too often now, too long a year. It has to be less, not more,” says the 21-year-old Hamburg native.
By no means incidentally is this whole appointment affair carried out on the back of women’s tennis. The installation of a new World Team Cup, based on the model of the long-standing successful event in Düsseldorf, is at the expense of the Hopman Cup – the popular mixed show tournament that has been held in Perth, Western Australia, for around three decades. All the great names appeared there, including one like Steffi Graf, who appeared there alongside Boris Becker. But there is no place for the women in the beautiful new tennis world at this time, they are simply not included in the plans of the co-organizing association Tennis Australia.
Where it fits the picture. After all, the world federation had let the Spanish kicker Gerard Pique and his plans for the Davis Cup to the tune of billions of euros so much enmeshed the world federation that the female team competition Fed Cup completely disappeared into the background. Only after heavy criticism, among others from Judy Murray, the mother of tennis star Andy Murray, the world federation announced an increase of the prize money for the Fed Cup and promised, albeit only vaguely, also reforms for the cup fight.