Year Ending Review – 2023

By U.B. Acharya

Now that the last tournament of the year is over, it has become customary for me to review the results of important tournaments and also the performance of leading players. As most of the tennis fans know, apart from four Grand Slam events and the year ending ATP Finals, there are nine Masters 1000 events. In addition, there are over 50 ATP 500 and ATP 250 events all over the world thus making a total of 68 ATP tournaments.

Of the four Grand Slam events, the first two — the Australian Open and French Open — were won by the 36-year-old Novak Djokovic. By winning the French Open, he set two new world records. First one was that he overtook Rafael Nadal who has won 22 Major titles. The second record is that he is the only player to have won all the four Grand Slam events at least thrice!

The Wimbledon finals was between two top seeds namely Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz. The match went to five sets eventually won by Alcaraz. This match has been compared to two earlier epic Wimbledon Finals namely, Bjorn Borg Vs John McEnroe in 1981 and Djokovic Vs Roger Federer in 2019.

The last Grand Slam event of the year — the US Open was played at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Billie Jean King Arena in New York. Though the experts predicted a rematch of Wimbledon finalists, it was between Daniil Medvedev and Djokovic, a rematch of US Open 2021. However, this time it was Djokovic who won the match in straight sets. Unfortunately, the score does not reflect the competitiveness of the match as it was really a close match.

Among the nine Masters 1000 tournaments, Djokovic, Alcaraz and Medvedev won two each, and one each by Andrey Rublev, Jannick Sinner, Hubert Hurkacz. And the prestigious year ending ATP Final was won by Djokovic, a record breaking seventh time. Thus, he created during the year three new records and extended three of his own previous records.

A special mention must be made here about our own 43-year-old Rohan Bopanna who went deep in the draw (finals or semifinals) in many important doubles’ tournaments this year.

Although I have done and dusted with the topic of GOAT, this subject does not seem to die down with the “FEDAL” (meaning Federer and Nadal) fans and experts. Until a year ago, they proclaimed that performance was the only criteria but now that Djokovic has overhauled all records, they say that numbers do not count but it is the impact of a player on tennis as a whole or style of play or popularity of a player should be the criteria. Since it is purely subjective, I will leave this matter to the better judgement of the readers.

I would now like to discuss a touchy subject of earnings of tennis players. It is well-known that a few top-ranked players not only earn millions of dollars in prize money but also earn several times more in endorsements. For example, in 2022, Federer having played just two matches earned a whopping 90 million dollars in endorsements and in appearance fees!

While the top 20 ranked players have decent earnings, lower down the ranks, the income drops exponentially and it is really tough going. India’s top ranked singles player Sumit Nagal, who has a present ATP ranking of 156, ran out of money this summer and AITA and Tatas had to bail him out. A good pair of tennis shoes costs Rs. 12,000 and a tennis racket costs Rs. 30,000. Taking the plight of lower ranked players into account, the new Professional Tennis Players’ Association headed by Djokovic has appealed to ATP and ITF to increase the prize money of Challengers and Features tournaments. Since there is not much enthusiasm among other top-ranked players, the lower ranked players have to depend either on their own country’s tennis association or some  benevolent industrialist.

Now let us look at the prospects of tennis next year. Good news is that Rafael Nadal has promised to come back after his surgery and recuperation. Since his ranking has gone down below 300, he would have to work hard to win another Major title. Though difficult, in his case it is not impossible. Meanwhile Djokovic has stated that he will continue to compete as long as he has a chance of winning Majors. The 24-28 age group players like Medvedev, Tsitsipas, Zverev, Hurkacz, Rublev and Sebastian Korda could still win a Major or two. However, my hopes are on youngsters like Alcaraz, Sinner, Holger Rune and the new find Ben Shelton to make the old timers run for their money.

Recently a new outdoor game called pickleball (a combination of table tennis and tennis) has picked up among the middle-aged citizens of USA which might have a negative impact on spectatorship of tennis tournaments. However, the foot-fall (number of spectators) during the US Open for two weeks was nearly 9,60,000 which is the maximum ever recorded. This shows that tennis will still flourish for some more years.