{"id":107931,"date":"2026-07-05T09:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T13:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=107931"},"modified":"2026-07-05T01:04:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T05:04:33","slug":"107931","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2026\/07\/05\/107931\/","title":{"rendered":"The ATP Is Wrong, Yet Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ATP presented a reform package to approximately fifty doubles specialists in a meeting at Wimbledon this week. The headline numbers are these: the prize money split between singles and doubles would shift from 80-20 to 90-10, effectively halving the share doubles players currently receive. Draw sizes would be cut in half across all tournament levels, dropping from 32 to 16 teams at Masters 1000 events and from 16 to eight at ATP 500 and 250 level tournaments. Entry into Challenger events would increasingly favor singles players over doubles specialists. The ATP’s stated rationale is that the money saved would be redirected to early-round singles prize money, improving life for players ranked just inside and outside the Top 100.<\/span><\/p>\n

The doubles players issued a collective statement on Friday<\/span><\/a>. They said they are not a carnival sideshow. They also said it would be impossible for anyone outside the top 30 in doubles rankings to make a living if the proposals are adopted. The defending Wimbledon doubles champions, Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash, said directly that they had been told by ATP officials the governing body wants to reduce the number of specialist doubles players on tour. The coach of the World #1 in doubles, Calvin Betton, described the proposals as quite disgusting and pointed out that the ATP stands for Association of Tennis Professionals, not Association of Singles Players, and that they are actively trying to take livelihoods away from professional tennis players they are supposed to represent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why This Is Happening<\/span><\/h3>\n

The proposed reforms would also require a complete redesign of the ATP doubles ranking system, as fewer tournaments and smaller draws would alter the current distribution of ranking points. But the ranking system is not why this is happening. The ranking system is a consequence.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is happening is straightforward if you are willing to say it plainly. The ATP has been steadily reshaped by the influence of private equity money that entered the sport through the sale of majority stakes in ATP events. When private equity buys into a sports product, it does what private equity does: it identifies the parts of the product that generate maximum returns and concentrates resources there, and it identifies the parts that do not and shrinks or eliminates them. Doubles tennis does not generate significant television audiences, nor does it move sponsorship needles. It does not justify its share of the prize pool from a revenue-per-eyeball perspective. So doubles tennis gets cut.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The framing around early-round singles prize money is the part that deserves the most scrutiny. The ATP’s position is that gutting doubles allows the Tour to invest in lower-ranked singles players who struggle to cover the costs of competing. That argument would be more convincing if the ATP had spent the last several years demonstrating consistent concern for players ranked outside the Top 100. It has not. The sudden concern for the player ranked 120th in the world is an excuse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Pattern, Not a Mistake<\/span><\/h3>\n

The ATP doubles proposals did not arrive in a vacuum. They arrived alongside a separate proposal to gut the ATP 250 level, which is developmental backbone of the professional tour, and replace it with events that generate more commercial return for fewer stakeholders. They arrived after Wimbledon joined the other Grand Slams in shortening doubles matches from five to three sets in 2023, reducing the product’s competitive integrity in the name of schedule efficiency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each of these decisions was taken individually, justified individually, and contested individually. Taken together they describe a governing body in the process of systematically dismantling the parts of professional tennis that do not serve the commercial interests of the sport’s most powerful financial stakeholders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The ATP was founded in 1972 by players who were fed up with tournament directors and national associations controlling the sport at their expense. The founding principle was player representation. The organization exists, in theory, to serve the professional interests of its members, all of its members, not just the ones whose faces move merchandise. The World #1 in doubles should not be earning more than a player ranked #70 in singles is apparently a position ATP officials expressed in the meeting this week, according to Betton. That sentence, coming from an organization whose mandate is to represent professional tennis players, is the clearest possible statement of what the ATP has become.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Conclusion Is Uncomfortable<\/span><\/h3>\n

Players are talking about legal action. The doubles specialists who met at Wimbledon this week know the odds are against them, which is why they are going through media channels first to build public support before a decision is finalised ahead of the US Open<\/a>. That strategy is the right one. It is also probably insufficient.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ATP will find a version of these proposals that is legally defensible and commercially palatable, walk it back just enough to avoid a protracted court battle, and implement something that achieves the same ends with less public resistance. It has done this before on other issues. The playbook is familiar. Announce something extreme, absorb the outrage, modify the margins, proceed.<\/span><\/p>\n

What it will not do is genuinely reconsider whether dismantling doubles tennis serves the long-term health of the sport. Long-term health is not the metric by which these decisions are being made. Quarterly returns on private equity investment in tournament properties is the metric, and doubles tennis scores poorly on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ATP is wrong to do this. It is also not confused about what it is doing or who it is doing it for. That stopped being ambiguous a long time ago. The organization that was founded by players to protect players from exactly this kind of commercial capture has become the instrument of that capture. The ATP is wrong, yet again, but like many times before, it\u2019s entirely on purpose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Peter van den Berg\/USAToday Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ATP presented a reform package to approximately fifty doubles specialists in a meeting at Wimbledon this week. The headline numbers are these: the prize money split between singles and doubles would shift from 80-20 to 90-10, effectively halving the share doubles players currently receive. Draw sizes would be cut in half across all tournament […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5393,"featured_media":57768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,4],"tags":[43891,43890],"class_list":["post-107931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","category-wta","tag-julian-cash","tag-lloyd-glasspool"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108005,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107931\/revisions\/108005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}