Darren Cahill: 'An ATP-WTA merger would make things easier for everyone'

It's the news of the moment: Roger Federer's tweet that has aired the possibility that ATP and WTA unite to manage world professional tennis together (at least the one outside the Slam, of the Davis/Fed Cup and the Olympics) has tickled the fantasies of many fans and insiders in the world of tennis.

Darren Cahill, the coach of two-time Grand Slam winner Simona Halep, has backed calls for radical changes to tennis. “This leads us more towards a commissioner in tennis,” he told The National. “Let’s say hypothetically the four Slams remain as they are, but then you have the ATP, the WTA and the ITF all rolled into one, and that means you can appoint a commissioner of tennis that oversees the men’s and women’s tours, Fed Cup, Davis Cup, the Olympics and also the smaller events that are under the ITF and also under the WTA. That person and that organisation would have enormous power. And I think, hypothetically, it would be a pretty good position for a tennis player to be in, because you know that every single decision being made is made in the best interest of the game.”

Cahill believes the current tennis structures are complicated: “At the moment, as a fan of tennis, if you want to try to follow tennis, whether it’s Davis Cup, Fed Cup, the WTA, the ATP, smaller events, there are so many different platforms a fan has to subscribe to and it’s confusing,” he explained.

“Social media becomes much easier as well, if the tours are merged. Instead of competing against each other for a social media space, that becomes all one. One set of rules; at the moment there are different rules on the WTA tour compared to the ATP tour, one set of rankings as well, which would make everything much easier to understand.

Even for us that live on the WTA Tour, it’s not easy to understand how the Tour works, whereas the men’s Tour is much easier. We know your 1000s, the 500s, the 250s and how the rankings work, it’s much more complicated on the women’s tour, so this would simplify everything.”

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/3eUn6Un