Ken Thomas from Radio Tennis: His take on state of the game

[johnyandell]

• "Unfortunately, professional tennis is a mess right now. The ATP Tour is close to fracturing, television viewership is down globally, players ranked between 130 and 500 in the world can't make a living, the biggest names in the game, Federer, Williams, Djokovic and Nadal are all close to retiring. Davis Cup has been dismantled and now actually has a competitor (ATP Cup). Even the current ATP Chairman, Andrea Gaudenzi is on record stating that tennis could be "drifting toward obsolescence". Yep...professional tennis is a dumpster fire. The ATP and WTA may not want to admit it, the USTA may not want to admit it, the ITF may not want to admit it, the Tennis Channel may not want to admit it...but the professional game is truly in a tailspin. Everybody is fighting to protect their little piece of the pie and no one is willing to help anyone. Everyone is at fault and everyone has a strong isolating and self serving opinion."

[tenniscoach1]

Interesting ... but, new stars always appear and traditionally tennis/sport/NHL/NBA ... they all ebb/flow and rise from the ashes like a pheonix. I had this chat with my daughter - I said to her as I say to all the athletes I work with ... “today in tennis you have to be exceptional/special because the days of being very good and making a nice living/getting sponsors - they are are now over” ... pre-covid if you were not elite you’d get by! I look at my people different now - if they are not elite they don’t work for me. The kids that are coming up now will figure out the new reality very quickly. I have one guy that works for my hockey company - he pulled in $85,000 a year pre-pandemic - he now makes $35,000 and I had to apologize to the guy and say its not what I see his true worth - but, this is the market now and he will need to be super elite and at a whole new level now. There will be people who will sew this field well during the drought and come out ahead of the field and there will be the dumb asses that go into Netflix. Tough times put the house back in order. Tennis will be fine. It ain't the first time it’s happened at it wont be the last.

[arturohernandez]

I agree that tennis will be fine. They have been hanging onto the old guard for too long. It's time for new blood and new energy. Baseball is also an old game and it managed to survive crises. Tennis will too.

There is the issue of making a living that is at the forefront. Tennis has had the equivalent of McEnroe, Borg and Connors for about 15 years. People get tired of seeing the same show over and over again.

It's time for new blood and time for them to make the game more dynamic. Baseline bashing is great but we need all court tennis to spice things up.

Let's hope that change will come and embrace our sport.