‘We all have to come to the table and figure it out’
Roger Federer makes an impassioned plea for player unity as tennis faces more infighting
This weekend’s Laver Cup in Chicago is not just going to present an opportunity for Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic to play doubles together for the first time. It will allow Federer and Djokovic – the two leading power-brokers in the locker room – to discuss what to do about the messy infighting that has broken out within this outwardly serene sport.
Player power is only intermittently expressed in tennis, but as Federer told The Daily Telegraph in an exclusive interview, he hopes to bring the sport’s three or four leading players together in a unified position.
This is the best way, he believes, to answer the questions posed by Gerard Pique – the Barcelona footballer turned moneybags tennis promoter, whose investment group, Kosmos, has effectively staged a takeover of the Davis Cup.
“For me, it’s really good to be on the [Laver Cup] team now with Novak so we can go through a few things like that on the side,” said Federer.
“Unfortunately, Rafa [Nadal] won’t be in Asia now [because of injury], so I just have to maybe give him a call,” Federer added. “It’s important to maybe just hear out Rafa a little bit, hear out Novak as well a little bit. Just see what do we think as players.
“It’s hard sometimes to get together, but the good thing with Novak, Andy [Murray] and Rafa is that we did it once in the past when we met at the slams and talked about prize-money increases, so we know how to communicate with each other.
“There are so many moving parts that we all have to come to the table, figure this out for the good of the tour, good of the players, good of the organisers, good of the fans. Because it cannot be that one does one thing, one does another thing, and then at the end, nobody is gonna win this way.”
The prospect of a Federer intervention will be welcomed by many tennis lovers. As we approach the end of the most chaotic year in the sport’s modern history, fans have been asking, “Who is going to sort out this unholy mess?”.
At the moment, the split between the Association of Tennis Professionals and the International Tennis Federation is so deep and bitter that both organisations are planning to introduce a pair of similar team competitions – the World Team Cup and the remodelled Davis Cup finals – in the space of six weeks in the winter of 2019-20. It is a situation that even Chris Kermode, the ATP’S executive chairman, has described as “insane”.
With plenty of negotiations to come, Federer is too canny to show his full hand. But one thing we do know is that he is not going to give up his glitzy new toy – the Laver Cup – without a fight.
The Daily Telegraph understands that, during the weeks in the lead-up to the US Open, Federer’s management company rejected a deal which would allow the Davis Cup finals to move from late November to late September, swapping positions in the calendar with the Laver Cup.
The Itf/kosmos axis then looked at bringing the finals forward to the week after the US Open but was warned off by the United States Tennis Association, which did not want another big event competing so closely with its own chief money-spinner.
Which is why Kosmos have now earmarked that week for a £7.5million winner-takes-all exhibition called the Majesty Cup.
“I need to really focus on this subject,” said Federer, with regard to the whole tennis calendar. “I know it’s been around a little bit now, it only happened in Cincinnati, but then you have the US Open and then you have vacation and then you have this [Laver Cup]. So I think maybe after this, and maybe throughout Shanghai, I will be able to really
‘It cannot be that one does one thing, one does another – at the end, nobody is gonna win’
focus in and dial in on what are all the moving parts, because it ain’t simple. It’s a lot [of detail] and how will the calendar look.”
A few minutes before this interview, the captain of the Laver Cup’s rest of the world team – John Mcenroe – had given his own take on the situation. “I’m hopeful that what they won’t do in tennis is end up with sort of all these different factions, and then it ends up [that] they hurt the sport ultimately,” he said.
Does Federer agree with Mcenroe’s later suggestion that the Laver Cup has inspired a rush to
stage more team competitions? “Maybe,” he replied. “That was not the idea. But yes, you could see it like that, sure.” However, he is reluctant to see himself as an event promoter or organiser. “I was maybe more of a catalyst and a guy with an idea.”
As for the Davis Cup itself, Federer was unwilling to be drawn on whether he will participate in next year’s competition (which, it was announced yesterday, will conclude in a finals week in Lille). One suspects that his verdict will only be decided after the next round of negotiations with Kosmos and the ITF. “I have not spoken to anybody yet,” said Federer.
“If Stan [Wawrinka] is not playing, then you have to ask yourself a serious question. If I am not playing, Stan has to ask himself the question. I don’t know if Severin [Luthi, the Swiss Davis Cup captain] is continuing, so let’s try to catch things all together and glue them together and we will see.”
If Federer can, indeed, glue the fractured sport of tennis back together, it would be an achievement to match anything he has done on the court.