Serena Williams’ coach blasts ‘revolting’ treatment of players outside top 100
The coach of one of the greatest players to ever hold a racquet has demanded the sport address its most concerning issue as the game continues to grapple with coronavirus.
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Serena Williams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou has lambasted the financial inequity in professional tennis as revolting, demanding the sport address the issue as it grapples with coronavirus.
The Frenchman said the COVID-19 crisis underlined the gaping disparity between the sport’s multi-millionaire superstars, including his most famous charge Serena Williams, and lower-ranked players.
Mouratoglou has urged tennis officials to use the suspension of the circuit to find a way to save the careers of players who were struggling financially even before the global pandemic.
Posting on Twitter, Mouratoglou wrote: “Players ranked outside the top 100 are barely breaking even and most of them are forced to fund their careers to keep playing professionally. Their lives are a financial struggle.
“Unlike basketball or football players, tennis players aren’t covered by fixed annual salaries. They’re independent contractors.
“They’re paying for their travels. They’re paying fixed salaries to their coaching staff, while their own salaries depend on the number of matches they win.
“I find it revolting that the 100th-best player of one of the most popular sports in the world — followed by an estimated one billion fans — is barely able to make a living out of it.”
My letter to the tennis community to raise awareness about the current situation of players out of the Top100. pic.twitter.com/mFTIECxOFL
— Patrick Mouratoglou (@pmouratoglou) April 7, 2020
While the US Open was the first to pay equal prizemoney to men and women in 1973, followed by the Australian Open, Tennis Australia has led the way in ploughing more money into qualifying and early rounds.
Federer, Djokovic and Nadal have supported the broader distribution of prizemoney but Mouratoglou believes it is scandalous players ranked just outside the top 100 now cannot survive.
“So, what happens when players are forced out of work for an undefined period of time? Well, they don’t get paid,” Mouratoglou wrote.
“Some of them are giving up on their dreams and are calling it a career.
“It’s been the case for too long. Although we have done away with the long-established male supremacy in the financial field, tennis retains one of the most extreme levels of inequality in any sport.
“The thing is, tennis crucially needs them to survive. Tennis can’t live only off its elites. The tours would atrophy.
“Because the tour is on pause for the reasons we all know, these players do not get any income, and unlike most top-100 players, they do not have any money on the side or sponsorship deals to live on.
“It is time to think about those players and help them, first in the immediate future, then in the long-term.”
Originally published as Serena Williams’ coach blasts ‘revolting’ treatment of players outside top 100