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| Front, from left: Australian’s Geoff Pollard, French’s Christian Bimes, ATP’s Mark Miles; back, U.S. Open’s Alan Schwartz, Wimbledon’s Tim Phillips, ITF’s Francesco Ricci Bitti |
A year ago, as the tennis world served up its annual fortnight on the green lawns of Wimbledon, a messy quarrel broke out between the four Grand Slams and the men’s ATP.
The ATP wanted the Slams to pay the players about $50 million more a year. ATP Chief Executive Officer Mark Miles even threatened a boycott of the U.S. Open.
Fast forward to today. The ATP recently signed a three-year pact to continue operating its season-ending championships with the Slams, and the men’s circuit has agreed for the next six years to continue giving the Slams significant weight in calculating player rankings.
“This has been a year of great progress and building relationships,” Miles said.
But while Miles may have ended the prize-money combat, he battles on. He recently asked that the Slams fund a deferred compensation plan, a quasi-pension fund for the players that would supplement one the ATP manages. He declined to say how much he was asking for, though he did say it was considerably less than $50 million.
While Miles sees the proposed fund as above and beyond prize money, the Slams’ view is that it would come out of existing player compensation.
Bill Babcock, the administrator of the Grand Slam committee, which encompasses the Australian, U.S. and French Opens as well as Wimbledon, said WTA player prize money already is sliced up to finance a deferred pay fund, and the same thing could be done for the men.
If the ATP insisted on a deferred fund beyond prize money, he said, the Slams could slow the rate of purse increases for the men.
