Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova: I would like top WTA players to comment and get a voice

Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova says she would like the top women on the WTA Tour to be more vocal on issues that impact the women's professional tour.

 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova would like top women on the WTA Tour to be more vocal

Pavlyuchenkova, who is part of the WTA Player Council, was speaking on the Eurosport Tennis Legends vodcast along with Austrian Jurgen Melzer where they discussed the issue of the ATP & WTA merger.

The Russian commented, "I feel like the guys, they’ve always been more united. I always hear or see in the news that Rafa, Roger or Djokovic have come up with some comments or they do something, like they comment about ATP. But I never anything from our top players from the WTA. They’re always silent. I would love to see more. Not only to see a united ATP and WTA, but at least just within WTA I would like our top players like Serena, for example, to comment and come up, get a voice."

Austrian Melzer also supported the idea of a merger between the two tours. "I have been asked this a few times these last few weeks. I would say in a perfect world, of course you want to unite tennis and you want to have it under one big leadership, I think it would be perfect. If we have the chance of being a global association, all of a sudden we can fight against soccer and all the other big sports in the world. Because right now, what we have, we have the ITF on one side, then we have the ATP, we have the WTA.  At least, that’s my common sense. I don’t know if it’s like that in reality. They have to negotiate with so many different things, it would be much easier if they could be under one umbrella."

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 13 and has won twelve singles and five doubles titles on the WTA Tour. She is a six-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist, having reached that stage at all four Grand Slams. Jürgen Melzer has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 8 and a career-best doubles ranking of world No. 6. He reached the semifinals of the French Open in 2010, losing to Rafael Nadal after coming from two sets down to defeat Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2VyF1I4