“And so obviously very early but discussions around almost like a version of promotion and relegation. There’s lots of different ways to make it interesting and not leave people behind.” You’re still going to have lots of different tournaments, 250s, 500s, 125s, Universal Tennis events, that I think can feed into a system. The problem right now is it’s so fragmented. And that results in odd scheduling.”
But with ideas of radical reforms floating around for decades, why would this time be any different? Nassar, who regularly speaks with the tours and the Slams, thinks that the mere existence of an independent player group like the PTPA could be crucial in helping the talks materialise. “We don’t have the luxury that some others in business and in sports have of saying, ‘This is good, we’re fine with where we’re at.’ And because of that I think we can help push people to making the necessary changes to really bring the sport to where it should be,” he explained.
“There has never been an independent player focus, nobody has asked these questions. And I kind of framed my job when I took over a year ago as just really starting by asking a bunch of questions that should be asked if somebody was truly, independently representing the players. It’s hard to ask a lot of these questions if you’re trapped within a current structure. The tours love to say that the players have a seat at the table – they have a player council, they have a player board, they own ‘half the tour’.
