Stan Wawrinka: Players are aiming at wrong target in Wimbledon pay row

Three-time grand slam champion Stan Wawrinka says the players protesting about Wimbledon prize money are aiming at the wrong target.

At Wimbledon on Saturday, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, the men’s and women’s world No 1s, were among more than a dozen players observing a media boycott that restricted their interview time to 15 minutes apiece.

The protest was staged despite Wimbledon announcing a 20 per cent increase in prize money – the largest annual hike in the tournament’s history – which will take the two champions’ share to £3.6m apiece while first-round losers receive £80,000.

But Wawrinka believes the protesting players would be better advised to look at the ATP Tour, which represents all the significant men’s events outside the four grand slams.

“Of course as a player you need to always fight to get more, to get a bigger piece of the cake, and that’s normal,” Wawrinka told Telegraph Sport. “But I do believe the focus shouldn’t be on the grand slams.

“I think there is a bigger problem with the prize money on the Tour and especially the bonus pool. The way the structure is now, you have to play eight Masters 1000 events to get a full share in the bonus pool. It’s the biggest mistake in the tennis world, the most dangerous one for injury.

“If you look at the past few years, there are way more injured players. People are playing year round to earn their full bonus. But it doesn’t matter what is on the table if you are injured, because you’re not earning anything anyway.

“Also, I personally think boycotting the press is the opposite of what you should do when you want to change something. You should explain more what your vision is, instead of cutting broadcasters off short.

“But the problem in this sport is that everybody is going to try to get what is good for themselves. Grand slams, tours, players – and even top 10 don’t want the same thing as top 100 in the world. It’s a constant fight and it doesn’t help anything for the long-term future of tennis.”

The list of players supporting the media boycott on Saturday included five of the top 10 on the ATP rankings and six on the WTA side. Sinner was the first to be asked about the policy and replied: “It’s not about the money – not only about the money. It’s the whole scenario we take into consideration with welfare and everything else.”

A few minutes later, Sabalenka claimed: “If you look to the [Wimbledon] prize money over the last 10 years, it’s kind of like stayed the same.” This is manifestly untrue, even if you take inflation into account, as prize money has more than doubled from £28m to £64m in that time.

But Sabalenka was merely parroting the party line from lead negotiator Larry Scott, formerly the WTA’s chief executive, that if you take the tournament’s turnover into account, the share redirected to the players has fallen from 14.9 per cent of revenues in 2016 to 14.4 per cent now.

The central tenet behind Scott’s negotiating position is his claim that the ATP and WTA Tours pay out a much higher proportion of their revenues in prize money. But Jamie Baker, Wimbledon’s tournament director, told Telegraph Sport that the exact figures for the tours are impossible to substantiate.

“With regard to the idea that we should revenue-share, there has been a perception in the tennis world that the tours are better on transparency than Wimbledon, and that is fundamentally not the case,” Baker said. “Every year we publish audited accounts, available to the public.

“The reason why that is important is that, if we are having a conversation about specifics to do with percentage of revenue, nobody has any idea if we’re comparing like with like. The only thing we know as facts is that our numbers are transparent and in the public domain. That’s not the case for the Tours.”

Not every leading player was prepared to support the protest. Alex de Minaur, the Australian world No 6, had been part of a similar media boycott at the French Open in Paris just over a month ago, but said that he had decided not to limit his interview time this week in recognition of Wimbledon’s “big step in the right direction”.

British No 1 Cameron Norrie also supported his home grand slam, saying: “Wimbledon’s done such a good job to improve the facilities. The new gym is looking so good. I think it’s a 20 per cent increase from last year, which is absolutely huge. So I think when you put it into perspective, I’m pretty happy and pretty lucky to be here playing for that.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]