Tennis Mailbag: Why Players Could Boycott the Majors

• Hey everyone, here’s this week’s Served podcast:

• Next week’s we’ll have a Roland Garros draw show on Served and plenty of lead-in content on Sports Illustrated.

• In non-tennis news, meet Gout Gout, who’s 18, and on pace to become the world’s fastest man.

• Note Rafa is coming to Netflix next week.

• RIP the pioneering sports psychologist, Jim Loehr.

Onward …

A few of you asked about the “boycott” that several players, including Aryna Sabalenka, raised in Rome, demanding a greater share of the revenue from the majors. I file this under the two-things-can-be-true-at-once category.

The players ought to be paid a greater percentage of the gross revenues the majors generate. We should, in theory, be siding with the players. The majors should negotiate in good faith.

A) The 15 to 18% of gross revenue that the majors pay to tennis labor is neither right nor in line with industry standards.

B) In-kind wages are meaningless. Players don’t care about the U.S. Open facilities upgrade, the Australian Open cold plunges or the extra meal vouchers. They want money. Stating that the players are miscalculating the percent of revenue because of an unaccounted for gym upgrade—an actual talking point by the majors—insults everyone in the room.

C) The majors’ argument that they are nonprofits pouring money into the growth of tennis? That, too, is a loser of an argument. Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner don’t—and shouldn’t—care that the U.S. Open revenue they generate is being spent on USTA coaches, school gymnasium short courts, or repaving courts in Topeka. Or that the Australian profits might be poured into talent development in Perth.

D) In good faith, the majors should be more generous and acknowledge talent. And yet ...

The players have to be realistic about their leverage and the collective action challenge.

A) Even at the current unsatisfying and unsatisfactory ratio, the majors pay more than other events. A first-round loser at the U.S. Open makes four times the purse of a first-round loser in Rome. You really want to walk away from that?

B) For the top players, they not only make more prize money at the majors, their endorsement contracts often contain bonuses for winning majors (and sometimes contain deductions for missing them).

C) The majors are the four coins of the tennis realm. History remembers your major haul, not your Shanghai, or even Indian Wells, haul. If you’re a top player, are you really going to sacrifice this opportunity? If you’re a mid-tier player are you going to sacrifice this opportunity when others pull out?

D) Part of the draw of the majors is the prestige and the experience. These are not rock concerts or star-vehicle movies. Fans attend and tune in for the event itself. Your upstairs neighbor could play your downstairs neighbor in the Wimbledon final, and millions would watch because it’s Wimbledon, it’s Centre Court and there’s a trophy on the line. Don’t bluff a boycott unless you mean it.

Jon,
Love Served. Looking forward to your and Andy’s French Open preview and predictions. About a year ago, after [Jakub Menšík] won a title in Miami, I asked you whose tennis future you would rather have: Menšík, [Jack] Draper or [João] Fonseca’s. Given Draper’s continued rash of injuries and given the emergence of some new blood in only a year, I am asking again, but this time I’m dropping Draper (whose game I love and who I hope can get and stay healthy) and ask you to choose between [Arthur] Fils, Menšík, [Ben] Shelton, [Rafael Jódar], Fonseca, [Learner] Tien and [Alexander] Blockx. Whose future(s) would you most want to have? And a related, but slightly different question—who is most likely to win a major in an era likely to be dominated by [Jannik] Sinner and [Carlos] Alcaraz?
Thanks,
Andrew Lachow, Larchmont, New York

• Thanks, and good questions. There’s a lot of promising, diversely sourced talent bubbling up. The question of whether anyone can challenge the Big Two is another matter.

My (admittedly unsatisfying) answer to your excellent question: it probably varies by surface. Jodar or healthy Fils on clay? Menšík or Shelton on hard? I worry a bit about Fonseca’s conditioning in best-of-five matches. I also worry a bit about Tien’s power deficit. Blockx is now a top-40 player in a groove, but he won two games (!) in Indian Wells qualifiers two months ago.

Jodar defeated Tien in straight sets at the Italian Open on Tuesday. He has easy power, height, fine athleticism and confidence. However, he has yet to be dented. Eventually, they’ll come. Losses. Injuries. That faded excitement when “pro tennis player” goes from a paid global adventure to a job. But we’re not there yet.

An aside: Apart from winning majors, Sinner and Alcaraz are hype dousers. The salon loved Fonseca, and then he played Alcaraz and showed that there are levels between. Same for Jodar, who played Sinner well, but went down in straight sets. We had Fils against Sinner on Tennis Channel last week. We (I) tried to sell it. Big opportunity for the ascending Frenchman! What a statement he could make! Imagine backing up a clay title in Barcelona with a takedown of the world No.1! And then Sinner won in barely an hour, facing zero break points.

Jannik Sinner won a record-tying 31st consecutive Masters 1000 match. | Mike Frey-Imagn Images

Howdy,

Here’s a fun statistical question: Jannik Sinner is currently sitting pretty with 14350 ATP points, which would place him at second or fourth place* for “most ATP points accumulated on a given week.” The current record is from Novak Djokovic, at 16950, in June 2016. Given that Sinner is running through the clay court season free from Alcaraz, do you think he’ll take this record?

Further, would this mean Sinner is more dominant than 2016-era Djokovic was? Should we view points as a sort of ELO score, or as something else?

Happy Monday,
Thomas

• Thanks. Heads up: The points allocation has changed over the years, so it’s a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison. We are all striving to make a statistical case, laying out Sinner’s dominance to a general audience. Here’s the best I can offer:

If Sinner wins in Rome (as expected) and had Sinner won the 2025 French Open—and if he wins Roland Garros in 2026, as expected—he will have won each of the 14 biggest titles in tennis before turning 25. As I write this, he’s won three of the four majors and eight of the nine Masters 1000s.

This is a continuation of last week’s theme. The goal in sports is to win. If you can entertain in the process, great. But entertainment is subjective and not often consistent with optimal success. Way too often, his success gets undercut by the claim that Sinner is boring. Sinner is AI. Sinner is robotic. Are there players who bring more energy to the court, who emote more, who attempt more spectacular shots? Yes. (Like most of the greats, Sinner doesn’t often go for broke because he doesn’t have to.) Are there players who are more active and controversial on social media? Who beef with opponents and offer tendentious sound-bites and close the distance between themselves and the public. Yes, to all. But I don’t know how fans watch a player deliver this level of ritual excellence and not stand to applaud.

We often see former top players become tournament directors. Examples include Tommy Haas (Indian Wells), James Blake (Miami), Feliciano López & Garbiñe Muguruza (Madrid). My question is: Why would (presumably wealthy) tennis celebrities ever want that job? As far as I can tell, tournament directors need to deal with player gripes about court assignments and scheduling, player gripes about tennis balls, player gripes about officiating, player gripes about closing the roof, player gripes about privacy, rules disputes, rain delays, event security, unruly fans, ball kids, and on and on and on. Can you please tell me what the fun part of the job is? The only positive that I can think of is that tournament directors usually get the best seat in the house.

Rich, New York City

• Good question. I can point you to James Blake’s Served interview. Let’s be clear: this isn’t volunteer work. A six-figure salary for what is basically three or four weeks of on-the-ground work with a few pop-in visits and Zoom calls in between? I suspect if you made that an online job posting, you’d have a lot of résumés.

Serving as a tournament director enables you to stay in the mix and stay in the sport. You get to see former colleagues and meet new players. Yes, you hear the inevitable gripes about scheduling and courtesy car snafus. You also get to be back in your milieu. There might be additional paid corporate work. If you’re angling to work in tennis administration, it’s a good starting job.

A quick addition: We had two people write about the social media rumor that Venus Williams was being “eyed” as the next WTA CEO. I guess I’ll, grudgingly, go here.

We have great regard for Venus. We have great regard for the WTA. But this ain’t a match. And this ain’t happening. For one—and this applies to both tours—the CEO position has lost much of its status and power. It is the chairman/chairwoman who is captaining the ship.

Also, Venus has so much going on in her life. She wants a corporate job with budget reports, performance reviews, mandatory videos, out-of-office emails, and the like?

Don’t you extend a sports career specifically to avoid this fate?

Say this, though: If Venus is more involved in the direction of the tour, that’s a win-win. If she wants to lend her perspective, experience, intelligence and dignified bearing? If she wants to leverage her contacts and brand name? If she wants to cut through some of the inefficiencies and call balls and strikes—knowing she’s not compromised (she doesn’t need the job and isn’t angling for a promotion)? She’d be great, and the WTA would be well served to have her on board.

Shots

• Thanks to Randy Walker for this link.

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