The tennis calendar is broken but here is a radical way to fix it

Back in November, I got to the stage where I had serious tennis burn out. After an already long season, we still had the finals of the Billie Jean King Cup, the Davis Cup and more to get through. I just thought, 'Oh my God, give us a rest tennis – give the players a rest'. 

I have long been critical of the congested and demanding tennis calendar which gives the top players just a few weeks of an off-season and, after seeing major end-of-year events like the WTA Finals, the BJK Cup and Davis Cup finals struggling to fill stadiums, I wonder whether there is just too much being crammed in.

The tennis tour has been put together in a certain way for a long time now and that old saying “history gets in the way of change” probably rings true here. There are three main bodies – the ATP, WTA and ITF – and a fourth, the Grand Slam nations committee, that influence the calendar. They are all understandably protective of their own patches and none of them want to give up any territory. That leads to congestion and repetition which does not necessarily address the best long-term interests of the players, the fans or the sport.

My feeling is that, if you were starting again with a commissioner of tennis, a committee of the best creative and business brains in the game and a blank sheet of paper, you'd plot out a very different calendar of individual and team events to maximise the potential of the sport. 

A commissioner and committee would add a level of leadership that is missing, as there are so many different bodies that influence the sport at the moment and each has its own set of priorities. The commissioner and committee could act as an umbrella to help manage all of these separate bodies to ensure that the calendar flowed better, attracted as many fans as possible and worked to the overall benefit of tennis and its players.

For example, this week marked the start of the inaugural United Cup, a mixed-team event launched by Tennis Australia. To me, this is exactly the kind of event that tennis needs.

It replaces the Hopman Cup, which I absolutely loved up until it was scrapped in 2019. One of my favourite memories in tennis was watching Roger Federer and Serena Williams on court in the Hopman Cup, playing against each other in mixed doubles for Switzerland and the United States respectively. It was unbelievable to see two of the sport’s all-time greats battle it out. It attracted a massive global audience. We would never have had that iconic moment without an event like the Hopman Cup. But the following year the event was dropped and you think, 'what on earth are you doing?'