Without the majors, most of the professional tennis players in the world wouldn’t even be able to afford to compete unless of course they came from a lot of money or found someone kind enough to fund their dreams.
The next stop on the professional tennis circuit is Roland Garros, a time for many to add to their depleted bank accounts. The second major of the year has €16,566,000 in total prize money.
If you are Denisa Allertova (109th player in the world) that means you miss the main draw cut this year by one spot so you will have to roll the dice in the qualifying draw where the tournament only guarantees you €5000 – significantly less than the €35,000 she would receive for being a direct acceptance into the main draw.
Most would say that’s a decent pay check for the 48 players that will go out in the first round of qualifying, the majority in under two hours.
But we are talking about players ranked in the top 200 in the world struggling to make a living when the minimum salary for an NFL rookie is $450,000.
Just to make it even more painstakingly clear – last week I was at the $100,000 ITF event in Trvava. The player I coach, Alexa Glatch, lost in the second round of main draw and walked away with $1072.00. The top 3 seeds were all ranked inside the top 100 in the world and cut off for the main draw was around 150.
Let’s take a look at her expenses without going into the exact numbers. A coach on tour makes $1000 plus per week and a hitting partner $500. The hotel for the week is $650 each for the player, coach, and hitting partner. Meals are $200 each for the week and the flights a cool $1000 round trip from the US to Europe. Lastly, the flight over to Paris at $140 per person.
That’s $7470 in expenses for the week. The prize money at Roland Garros will almost bring you back to even, but let’s not forget the wages and expenses in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
So what is the solution? I agree with the ITF proposal that the professional tour will look to only accommodate 700 players. Regional qualifying tournaments will cut expenses by an enormous amount. Realistically, taking care of 700 professionals properly is a much better model for the sport.
The prize money was increased at ITF events, the result, many tournaments were cancelled as they could no longer afford to hold the tournament. It’s fair to say that this idea to increase player earnings actually back fired leaving many players without a job for those weeks.
It’s time for change
There are two main things that need to change in order for tennis to continue growing and remain the number one female sport in the world –
- Prize money distribution especially in the qualifying draws.
- Drastic action needs to be taken so that players right through to 200 in the world are recognizable.
I’ll leave you all with these final questions. What are reality TV stars famous for? Often nothing at all. Mama June got her own spin off after Honey Boo Boo blew up in the United States. Props to her, she’s now an international super star and probably endorsing a lot of products……but what is she actually famous for? How can we get that same sort of reach in tennis? How could we improve our branding and tell the interesting stories of so many of these incredibly talented and interesting individuals? Because unlike the majority of faces that have become too familiar to us simply because they appeared on TV shows like the bachelorette (which we should all know by now is completely fake), these top 200 girls are remarkable and it’s about time we started telling their stories!