Fixing Tennis: How to Fix the Broken Professional Circuit

In my blog, I seek to break down and explain issues around business as well, and although tennis is a sport it is also a business.

Tennis is known to be a cutthroat business because out of all the tennis players in the world, only the top 100 players in the world profit. In fact, if you are at 100 in the world you are probably breaking even. Players and influential people in the tennis world have voiced displeasure with the current state of affairs in the tennis. People know that there needs to major changes to professional tennis, but no one has brought people together, sat down, and figured out the best way to proceed moving forward. The truth is action needs to be taken now, the growth of tennis in the world needs to be realized and kids should value tennis over other sports (like pickleball in the US).

With that, the things from what I have heard and read that players in the tennis world complain about the most under the current system are two things:

The season is too long and the offseason is too short (only four weeks).
More people need to be able to make money playing professional tennis.

The second complaint is more complicated than the first complaint, but when you sit down and think about it, they both are fairly complex. The main thing I learned in forming a solution is how tennis events came about historically is the reason why the current system is not right. There are lots of traditions, but there also new tournaments that were added over time where people did not think about things like overall travel time for players, and whether the event was in the right part of season considering all the other tournaments for the year. So, I agree with players that some events should be removed from the tour, but for me that is not how you make the season shorter. You make the season shorter while cutting down travel time and greatly saving players money by reorganizing the tour so that the Asian tour season (which has the least tradition in tennis) is moved from an afterthought, taking place after the US Open, to the beginning of the year after the Australian Open but before Indian Wells (the first Masters level tournament of the year). My change would make Shanghai the first Masters 1000 tournament of the year.

Before I get into the details of how the change would work, and what other changes I would make I need to address the biggest problem in professional tennis and that is it’s lack of an overarching governing body.

First, the ATP, WTA, and the ITF need to merge into one organization.

What would this look like, and how would the organization be governed? There would be some key differences and similarities with the structure of the organization with other sports like the PGA, the NBA, and the NFL.

The first thing that is noteworthy is that this new organization that I’m calling the PTA (Professional Tennis Association) is that there is not a separate organization for the woman’s tour which will help ensure equal treatment between men and women. The second thing that is noteworthy is that the PTA should have one commissioner like the NBA, and the NFL, but with less power the Roger Goodell in the NFL (you can’t be the judge and the jury, when it comes to player discipline). The commissioner would not be paid as much as Roger Goodell either. The commissioner would oversee both the men’s and the woman’s tour. Additionally, I believe it is a good idea to have player input incorporated into the PTA, so that major decisions can not happen without a player approval. This should involve the top 100 players because they likely have invested the most to get to that point in their careers.

By merging the three main bodies of tennis, the ATP, the WTA, and the ITF you fix the lowers levels of tennis as well. Let’s start with Junior tennis. Most countries have their own governing body like the USTA for example, but the ITF juniors and now PTA juniors under my system should be the gold standard for Junior events. Bodies like the USTA should incorporate and adopt PTA junior events and one should be able to get a USTA ranking and a PTA junior ranking from the same USTA event since they are ranking different things (a US ranking vs. an international ranking). It would promote a worldwide adoption of the junior tennis system, which can provide a local plethora of tournaments for players to play in so they can develop without the travel the pros do.

Above the Junior level is called the ITF future events which are entry level pro level tournaments (PTA futures after theoretical merge), and they are for younger players. Then on the men’s side you have the what was originally the ATP Challenger series and would be the PTA Men’s Challenger series under my system. The junior and minor league pro circuits would feed into the Men’s and Woman’s tour events.

The Grand Slams would remain independent bodies and their tournaments would not be touched. There is too much tradition for these bodies to ever make significant changes. They are the center of the sport of tennis and everything revolves around the majors anyway.

A Crude Diagram of the Proposed New and Streamlined System

The collegiate and amateur organizations in the US and around the world can also remain seperate. I do not see a need to combine what should be the amateur world and the professional world together. If anything, the amateur provides a different but valid path for a player to go pro. Imagine a player going to the NCAA and playing while receiving an education. For some players, this path is more desirable than the climbing up through the levels of the pro circuit.

Core Principles for the Men’s and Women’s Tour to Cut Player Costs and Extend the Off Season

Everyone knows that there needs to be less professional tennis governing bodies, but I am proposing new ideas at this part of the article.

Move Shanghai Masters to after Australian Open, but before Indian Wells.

As I mentioned before, Shanghai and East Asian lower level build up tournaments, and challengers need to moved to after the Australian Open. Some party in tennis is going to have to adjust for real change to happen, and the Shanghai Masters are the newest Masters addition to the tour and have the weakest argument to stay where they are in the current tour schedule. Plus you could arguably secure better TV rights in your tournament if you were earlier in the season instead of being after the US Open, where most people stop watching tennis for the year. It is really a win for everybody including the players. The biggest negative to this is Shanghai in the winter is cold, so they would have to build either indoor facilities or move the tournament to another city further south in China that is warmer. China is known for their infrastructure, and could get those facilities built in no time flat. Keep in mind that most places where the tennis tournaments are held in on tour in East Asia are extremely hot in the summer anyway.

What does this look like? I envision Shanghai being moved to the third or fourth week in February. All of the lesser tournaments in China can also be moved to February as well. I believe tournaments in places like Japan or Korea can be moved as well or be removed from the tour because at the end of the day there are some events that are going to have to be canceled, for the tour schedule to be coherent which it is not right now.

The Second Half of the ATP Tour Calendar

2. Keep 250’s, 500’s Tournaments Within a Determined Radius of the Closest Masters 1000 Tournament.

If you look at the ATP schedule above, and examine the month of February, for an example, you will see that there are tournaments all over the world basically. In this case there is at least one tournament in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia (the middle east). This remarkable because this covers four continents. By following this principle, for the month of February, tournaments would be restricted to East Asia and the Pacific. In addition, in the previous month the players are in Australia, so they will not have to travel relatively far to get to the Asian Tournaments saving on travel costs and time. I will not bother calculating what the radius should be, but it is something that is very doable in my opinion.

3. Do NOT Touch the Grand Slam Tournaments

The Grand Slams are the pinnacle of the sport of tennis. They are loaded with tradition and memorable moments. There is simply no way that those tournaments are going to change anything about what they are doing because human beings when tradition involved start acting irrational and strange. Wimbledon is always going to be in July, and players are always going to wear white. Maybe these are some of the things that turn people off from tennis, but it also what makes it interesting. At the end it’s about how we frame the the Grand Slams being independent bodies. If we frame it as a problem, we would being doing the sport a disservice because at the end of the day people most people only watch the Grand Slams. Instead I would view the independent nature of the Slams to be a protective aspect of the sport and would look to find way to use the tour to prop up the Slams and vice versa. For example, a player’s success on tour will determine their seed in a Slam. This protects the tour because it prevents foreign parties like Saudi Arabia from buying players off the tour because players live to win the slam, and by not participating on the tour you would not be able to seed in the Slams. This is much different from golf because there are no seeds in golf. This is why LIV Golf was able to disrupt the entire sport of golf, it is not this simple in tennis.

4. Keep the Scheduling of the Cups the Same.

In tennis there are many cups, or international team tournaments. There is the United Cup (mixed gender teams) Hopman Cup (mixed gender teams), Davis Cup/Billie Jean Cup, and the Lavier Cup. These cups are either at the beginning of the year or the end of the year. The Davis Cup occurs throughout the year in stages for qualifying. In my opinion, I do not see a reason to change any of the Cups on the tour schedule for the men or the women.

5. The Most Important Tournaments on the Men’s and Woman’s Tour Need to be Held Concurrently.

In my solution the both the ATP and WTA have merged into PTA, this means there needs to be more operational efficiency and cost savings in running events. There needs to be a focus on having all the Masters 1000 events for both men and women held in the same place even if it means removing a tournament from the schedule. This adds more complexity to the entire equation. For example, there are less Masters 1000 tournaments on the women’s tour than the men which should change. The number of events should be equal, Monte Carlo is not a tournament on the woman’s side. This needs to be fixed as well. This is likely going to be the biggest problem to achieve, but I think it needs to be done.

This leads me to a new idea, exhibition series events in the middle east. These are matches that have no bearing on your ranking but can earn players alot of money. The Netflix Slam in Las Vegas, held the day after I flew home from Vegas, seemed like a big success, and I believe that exhibition events in the middle east could be a way for well known players to make more money playing less. As you might know, there are parties in the middle east have enough money to buy players off the tour. Instead of buying players, the tour could allow for scheduling of exhibition matches where they could get a cut of the profit. How is this good you may wonder, well if the top 40 or well known players do not have to play as much tennis then that gives more opportunities to lower ranked players in the 500 level tour events and lower. For the higher ranked players those events are just tune ups, but an exhibition match or a series of exhibition matches could make the sport of tennis more lucrative, and satisfies tennis fans in the middle east in. Doing this makes sense especially for places not in Europe, Asia, Americas, or Australia because the travel burden increases substantially if you add regions like Middle East and Kazakhstan to the tour schedule. This is just food for thought.

6. Require Coaching Contracts on the Men’s and Women’s Tour to be Contingency Based.

Another big cost that players pay besides travel is coaching. What I am proposing is simplification of the relationship between players and coaches. The coaches should be paid if their players win, not for just training them. They should not be paid hourly. The hitting partners can be paid hourly, the sports psychologists, and the medical professionals can be paid hourly but not the coaches. The coaches play a big role in a players development and success. If a player is not developing, and as a result is not winning, what value did the coaching have. Players do not get paid if they do not win, why should the coaches. By doing things this way it ensures that the players that are paying the most to coaches are actually winning on tour which ensures that the money paid to coaches are well financed. The governing body over the tour should oversee that this is taking place.

7. Have Tournaments Provide Free Services to Players.

The tournaments where players play should have access to personnel like physical therapists, and personal trainers to work with players if they want or if they lack the team that more accomplished players have. I am not talking about the on the court doctors you see on TV. If enough tournaments provided those kinds of trainers, it’s possible a young or a struggling player without the world class team can still get access to them at little cost and could help ignite his or her career.

Big Takeaways

There obviously needs to be a merge of the ITF, ATP, and the WTA. The format of such a organization should mirror other successful organizations like the NBA or PGA Tour. Unlike golf the men’s and women’s tour should be run by the same governing body. The biggest changes that should be made to the tour should be to (1) make the season shorter and (2) cut costs for players which increase profitability for more players. This should be done by moving the Chinese or East Asia part of the tour to the month of February, and there might be some operational challenges but these challenges can be overcome by moving the event or building new facilities. Additionally, by eliminating build up tournaments that are too far away from that seasons Master’s tournaments, you will cut costs, and simplify logistics. Moreover, by keeping the most important events in the men and women’s game concurrent you will also cut costs and increase operational efficiencies. Lastly, make sure coaches are paid in a way that will help the players ranked 100-300+ in the world by making all coaching contracts between players and coaches contingency based. Coaches should not be making more than players.