Break point for journeymen players in times of lockdown
Financial impact more severe on tennis players ranked outside the world’s top 100 as only source of income dries up
MUMBAI: Patrick Mouratoglou, coach of Serena Williams, has penned an emotional letter on social media, asking the “dysfunctional” tennis community to look deeply inwards. The likes of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are to play in a virtual Madrid Open to raise €150,000 as donation. Georgian world No.375 Sofia Shapatava has started an online petition with change.org, which has garnered 1,800 signatures within a couple of weeks as on Wednesday.
The underlying theme of all these initiatives is to lend a helping hand to lower ranked tennis players; by that, what Mouratoglou means is anyone outside the top 100 in the world rankings, and detached from the money-spinning top stage of the sport. Most Indian pros fall in this category.
Tennis players, as Mouratoglou writes, are “independent contractors”. Only the few at the very top get lucrative sponsorship deals—for the vast majority, the only way to build and maintain a career is to earn money from the tournaments they play.
Unlike many other sports, the cost of playing tennis—the salaries of coaching staff, the use of practice facilities, the travelling for tournaments—are borne by the players themselves.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF)—the governing body of world tennis—the ATP (men’s body) and the WTA (women’s body) have all suspended their tours until July, at least.
The All India Tennis Association (AITA) has also put on hold all its domestic tournaments. Simply put, there is no tennis to be played, and therefore, there is no money to be made.
While this may not hurt the finances of the few in Indian tennis who play on the ATP and WTA tours, it is a body blow for the ones below them; those outside the top 150-200 of the world rankings who mostly ply their trade on the ITF circuit.
Like Sidharth Rawat, India’s sixth leading ranked singles player at world No.438. The 26-year-old from New Delhi was scheduled to play seven tournaments in China and four in Korea before the Asian swing was hit by the virus outbreak.
He was then forced to fly to South Africa last month to play a couple of tournaments in Potchefstroom before that too was suspended. Having already shelled out more than planned and left with nowhere else to go, Rawat returned home.
“Basically, I am left jobless for now,” Rawat said. “The tour suspension is a big impact for me, and players at our level will suffer the most. By playing tournaments, we can at least manage our expenses and are able to break even. Now, we have no source of income, while we still have to think about continuing our training and spending for our future travel plans whenever the tour resumes. I’ll have to figure out what I have to do in this break to keep the money cycle going.”
A men’s singles player can earn—before taxes—between $156 to $260 for entering the Round of 32 of an ITF tournament. It can go up to $887 for women (in the highest category W100 event)—from a base of $147—because there are five levels of competition as opposed to two for men.
The prize money increases as one goes deeper into a weekly tournament. Some of the ITF tournaments take care of the players’ hospitality, but not the travel.
Gurugram was scheduled to host an M15 men’s ITF tournament—a rarity in India—from
March 16 to 22 but was cancelled, dealing an even bigger jolt to the likes of Rawat. “It would have been so convenient and financially suitable for me to play in India. Before planning my tournaments, I have to figure out how much I have in my kitty. That’s why I prefer playing more in Asia. But with the current situation, I might not have anything left,” Rawat said.
Rutuja Bhosale, the country’s second-highest ranked women’s doubles player who played a key part in guiding India to a historic Fed Cup World Group play-off spot in Dubai last month, is also left counting her losses.
The 23-year-old had planned to play a W15 ITF tournament in
Israel, which got cancelled. She then applied for a last-minute visa with the hope of playing in Australia before the entire tour got suspended. Prior to the Fed Cup, an injury-hit Bhosale had participated in just a solitary tournament this year, in Jodhpur in February.
“Definitely, it is a loss of income. The bigger players who play on the ATP and WTA tours can still bear it. But for players at my level, there is no pay. Yes, we are going to save up because we will not be travelling, but it doesn’t make up for all the money that will be lost by not playing anything. Everyone is going to have a huge question mark on how we are going to earn that much money during the rest of the year and make up for the financial hit,” the Pune-based Bhosale said.
The world No.196 hopes that either the AITA or the players’ respective state associations can chip in for players in this crisis time.
“It will be great if AITA or our state federations can help us out a little, with either training or something else. I don’t know how, because no one has been in this situation before,” Bhosale added.
The burden may not be as heavy for India’s higher ranked players—the likes of Sumit Nagal, Prajnesh Gunneswaran and doubles specialists Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan—but the present no-play scenario does affect them as well.
“It surely will have a financial impact on me too,” the world No.127 Nagal, who has earned $25,393 so far this year as prize money according to the ATP website, said. “Tennis is not a sport where we have contracts or a steady flow of income. You earn depending on how you play every week. But here, you’re not playing anything.”
Sharan, the world No.56 in doubles, felt that the longer the tour stands suspended—talks that there might be no tennis this year at all have already begun— the more it will start pinching even the top 50 and 100 players.
“It definitely will have an effect on us too, but it will be a loss for everyone, not just me. And this is not a normal situation, so we will just have to face it and hope it doesn’t last too much longer,” the 34-year-old said.
HT sent a list of questions to the ITF, one of them being whether it was planning any mechanism to support the players in need. The response read, “We are continuing to monitor the situation, assess the impact and work with our partners across the sport as well as independent advisors. It is too early at this stage to say what the extent of the impact will be, the health and safety of all players and participants remains our priority.”