We have a funny and quite incredible situation here.
ATP stands for the Association of Tennis Professionals and was born in 1972 with the idea of protecting the professional tennis players.
One of the biggest problems of professional players is that the lower ranked ones do not earn enough money to make a living. So obviously the ATP should help them to get more money. Right? Well… yes… but…
In an incredible twist of events we have from one side the Indian Wells organisation that wants to increase the prize money by 1.6 millions. (some fonts say 800.000 $). These money would go straight to help the guys that lose in the first 3 rounds. On the other we have the ATP refusing it.. shouldn’t it be the other way round?
A conflict of interest?
The Indian Wells tournament director Raymond More is astonished by this situation to comment “I hope they’ll approve it, but I’m not optimistic,” Moore said.
“There’s an inherent conflict of interest with the tournament directors. It’s the tournament directors who are blocking it. Why would they want to block it? They want to put the muzzle or the bridle on Indian Wells or the BNP Paribas Open, so we don’t outdistance the tournaments around the world. I can’t think of another reason to block it.”
Some (curious) explanations
Strange enough it seems that the ATP said they refused because of the Indian Wells organizations proposed a 82-18 split for the increase against a 80-20 proposed by the ATP.
“That doesn’t hold water with me,” Moore said. “We are violating it, but we proposed an 82-18 split. In increasing it, we increase every single round and we didn’t ignore doubles.
“It’s not like we’re offering chicken feed to the doubles. We’re offer $250,000 for the winners. It’s a nice chunk of change.”
This is really crazy… everybody is battling to help the lower ranked players to have a healthier tennis and they get lost in this???
