Professional tennis is (still) broken. Here's how to fix it (again)

The calendar is a meat-grinder, the rankings are a maze, the Grand Slams hand out roughly 18 percent of their revenue to the players who make the show, and the sport’s alphabet-soup governing bodies are once again staring at a federal antitrust suit. In short, professional tennis—despite its unmatched gender-equality record and year-round global reach—remains structurally fractured as 2026 approaches.

Two flashpoints have accelerated the urgency. Last March the Professional Tennis Players Association, co-founded by 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic, trimmed its sweeping antitrust action to target only the four Grand Slams, seeking a larger revenue share and a less punishing schedule. The Australian Open quickly settled, exchanging documents and data for legal immunity; Roland-Garros, Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the ATP and the WTA continue to fight dismissal motions while holding informal détente talks. Djokovic, meanwhile, quietly exited the PTPA months after the recalibrated suit was filed.

On a parallel track, the WTA pledged “meaningful” calendar reform by 2027 through a newly formed player council chaired by 2024 U.S. Open finalist Jessica Pegula. Yet without ATP and Grand Slam buy-in—events own the broadcast windows and stadium leases—any unilateral overhaul will be partial at best.

Inside the locker-room, consensus stops at the problem, not the prescription. Daniil Medvedev floated limiting ranking points to Grand Slams and ATP-WTA 1000s, effectively downsizing the tour; ATP chief Andrea Gaudenzi longs to restore best-of-five finals at Masters 1000s, arguing shorter matches diminish prestige. Mary Carillo, the soon-to-be Hall of Fame broadcaster, counters that men’s majors should conclude with a 10-point tiebreak at two-sets-all, sparing four-hour epics like this year’s Alcaraz-Sinner French Open final. Jamie Delgado, coach of British No. 1 Jack Draper, believes a third-set tiebreak across events would inject volatility and curb the dominance of a small elite.

Fans, increasingly priced out of marathon tournaments, are voting with empty seats. The five expanded 12-day Masters 1000s were designed to yield extra rest and revenue; instead they strand early losers on site for a week with no match income while finals land on weekdays. One interim fix gaining traction: stage second-week exhibition events—10-point tiebreak shoot-outs, mixed-gender one-point slams—to monetize dormant courts and give lower-ranked players a payday.

The rankings carrot-and-stick exacerbates the grind. Eighteen events (19 for ATP qualifiers to the Tour Finals) count, and mandatory no-shows earn zero points, nudging athletes to over-compete. February’s Sunshine Double, Madrid-Rome clay, and the Gulf swing—this year only one week after the Australian Open—produced 14 withdrawals or mid-match retirements in Dubai’s 56-woman draw alone. Romain Rosenberg, deputy executive director of the PTPA, calls trimming both mandatory events and countable events “a good place to start.”

Health protections lag behind other sports. Holger Rune’s Achilles rupture will sideline him roughly a year; endorsement clauses often freeze pay during long layoffs. Protected-ranking rules exist but expire after 12 tournaments or 12 months. Dr. Robby Sikka, the PTPA’s medical director, wants standardized balls across each surface swing—current sponsorship deals allow wildly different felt from one week to the next, a post-COVID grievance players link to rising injury rates—and an annual player survey to identify best-practice tournaments for training rooms, family services and travel support.

Geopolitics adds another layer. February’s South-American clay circuit draws raucous crowds, yet the ATP and WTA are pushing into Saudi Arabia, where a non-mandatory Masters 1000 will debut as early as 2028. The WTA Finals are contracted in Riyadh through at least this year, with CEO Portia Archer open to an extension despite human-rights criticisms.

Meaningful repair will require three simultaneous concessions: fewer counting events, a higher revenue slice from the sport’s cash-box majors, and creative in-week formats that serve both player welfare and broadcast narrative. Without those, the vise that has tightened every decade since the Open Era began will simply keep squeezing—until the next lawsuit, the next injury wave, or the next television rights cycle forces tennis to confront its broken chassis all over again.