A little more than a month ago, a series of meetings of the top leaders of tennis ended in acrimony. The heads of the Grand Slams accused the leaders of the tour of undercutting their efforts to reshape the sport by plotting a series of backchannel deals with Saudi Arabia.
Now, another summit is about to get underway.
After weeks of virtual discussions The leaders of the Grand Slams and the men’s and women’s tennis tours will convene in London this week to try to forge some sort of compromise that will solve a series of challenges facing the game.
Those problems essentially boil down to this:
How can they bring more money into tennis and grow interest amid increasing competition, without overtaxing players who are demanding a streamlined schedule and compensation comparable to their far wealthier counterparts in other sports?
The ultimate solution, people connected to the discussions say, could even spell significant changes or perhaps even the end of the Paris Masters — a top indoor men’s tournament known as ‘Bercy’ — in favor of a new event in Saudi Arabia.
At the most recent summit with the sport’s top leaders, Gilles Moretton, the president of France’s Tennis Federation, the FFT, which owns the French Open and the Bercy tournament, said he would not let…
