Melzer on reform plans: “Without the doubles I would never have been top ten in the singles”

What the player community ATP plan? The bleeding of doubles tournaments. Instead of a grid of 16, in the future the majority of games will only be played with eight doubles per tournament. For 1000cc events, the field will be reduced from 32 to 16 teams. The Challenger Tour would also have a smaller field size. In addition, the distribution of prize money in the tournaments in the ratio of singles to doubles would be shifted from 80:20 to 90:10.

Austria’s Davis Cup captain Jürgen Melzer, who was in the top ten in singles and doubles at the same time in 2011, would find this a shame. “Without doubles I would never have made it into the top ten in singles.”

Too little to live on

If the ATP plans really go through like this, according to Melzer, there would only be a damn few doubles players left who could make a living from it. “And if I put on my association hat and not the player’s hat: there is still a lot of doubles being played in the clubs.”

The Austrian Tennis Association has expressed his concerns about this to the ATP in the past few days.