Novak could lead boycott over pay row

APOTenTIAl boycott by male players of next year’s Australian Open was among the more radical ideas floated at the ATP meeting taken over by novak Djokovic prior to this fortnight’s event.

As the season’s first Grand Slam began, more details emerged of the contentious annual player gathering on Friday — revealed by Sportsmail yesterday — in which he proposed a body to purely represent players’ interests.

He was accompanied by a lawyer specialising in employment disputes, who is said to have pointed out that it would be easier to withhold labour in Australia than it is in the other Grand Slam nations of the UK, the USA and France.

Kevin Anderson, vice-president of the ATP player council, confirmed yesterday that Djokovic made a surprise address to the meeting, and that others responded from the floor. That came after all non-players were asked to leave the room by the Serb, who is currently the council’s president.

The former world no 1 was expected to discuss the issue earlier today after he made his playing comeback at Melbourne Park, which has been abuzz with the possible ramifications of a new players’ union.

We are still a long way from the prospect of a boycott but it is clear there is support for Djokovic’s broader ideas.

One of them is to persuade tournaments to allocate a greater percentage of their revenues to prizemoney, and there is little question that tennis lags behind many sports in this regard. In the case of the Grand Slams (which are separate entities to the ATP Tour) this can be under 10 per cent.

More contentious would be the suggestion that they deserve a greater slice of the pie than their female counterparts, although there is little question that some male players feel this way.

Djokovic himself tackled this thorny subject in 2016. The Serb said the men ‘ should fight for more because we have much more spectators on the men’s tennis