Novak Djokovic’s Professional Tennis Players’ Association (PTPA) created a storm recently, after it filed a lawsuit against the world’s tennis governing bodies (ATP, WTA, ITIA, ITF). In the lawsuit, the Djokovic co-founded PTPA accused the organisations of creating a cartel-like environment, which has led to inequality, lack of transparency and negative impact on player earnings.
On Thursday, the Serbian appeared at a press conference for the Miami Open, and was immediately asked about the PTPA lawsuit. To everyone’s surprise, he claimed that he doesn’t agree with some things in the lawsuit.
“This is a classic lawsuit, so lawyers to lawyers type of situations,” he said.
“So to be quite frank with you, there are things that I agree with in the lawsuit and there are also things that I don’t agree with. I found that maybe some wording was quite strong in there. But I guess the legal team knows what they’re doing and what kind of terminology they’re supposed to use in order to get the right effect.”
PTPA has changed: Novak Djokovic
Djokovic co-founded the PTPA in 2020 and revealed that the organisation has changed since its inception. “It’s has grown into organization that has full time employees. I think it has around 30 people right now working day-to-day,” he explained.
Defending himself, he revealed that he doesn’t have any power and influence over the body’s working. “So they make a lot of different decisions and initiatives moving forward. And I am in an executive committee, but I’m not in power or influence, so I don’t have a veto over decisions or actions that they take,” he said.
The lawsuit also surprisingly didn’t have Djokovic’s signature, considering that he has been a vocal critic of governing bodies lately.
“In general, I felt like I don’t need to sign the letter because I want other players to step up. I’ve been very active in tennis politics,” he said.
“I’ve tried to do my very best during my very active career when I was playing the most matches in my career and didn’t have so much time and energy. But nevertheless, I felt that it’s also my responsibility in my role to try to use the influence and the role to support players and to fight for their rights and it’s been almost 20 years that I’ve been on the tour.
“I’ve seen some changes, but you know there’s some fundamental changes there are still yet to be made and I really hope that all the governing bodies including PTPA will come together and solve these issues,” he added.
Even Carlos Alcaraz on Wednesday slammed the PTPA and revealed that he didn’t support the lawsuit. Surprisingly Alcaraz has been cited in the lawsuit, where they have used his quotes from a press conference.
