Tennis is doing what it does every 10-15 years or so — having a reckoning with its endless schedule, its nonsensical governing structure, and a competitive format that even devout fans struggle to understand.
The sport is played across the world, with countries on every continent except Antarctica producing top players. No major sport integrates men and women more successfully, or has come as close to pay equality, though there is work to be done on those fronts. Nearly every day of the year, an enticing professional match unfolds somewhere on the planet.
And yet, the nearly unanimous opinion of everyone involved in the game — its leaders, its players, tournament organizers, sponsors, media executives, coaches — is that professional tennis is broken, a structural mess that exhausts its players, cannibalizes its business with dueling events and exists in a constant state of civil war among its alphabet soup of governing bodies. There are seven of them, or maybe nine or 10, depending on who is doing the counting.
“Such an amazing sport and so screwed up,” said Pam Shriver, the former star player who is now a commentator and a coach.
Marketa Vondrousova celebrates winning Wimbledon (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)
“I can’t even get quoted about it anymore…
