By Chris Oddo | Thursday, March 7, 2019
INDIAN WELLS—As an active voting member of the ATP Player Council Novak Djokovic cast his vote on the future of ATP Chief Chris Kermode on Thursday.
As a result, Kermode’s tenure will end at the end of 2019 but Djokovic wants those who rush to rush to credit Djokovic with sole responsibility for the decision to be sure that they understand: this was a collective decision, not a singular one.
More: ATP Chief Chris Kermode To Step Down
“I don’t want to express myself as for or against—I’m part of the council and as the president of the council I have responsibility and confidentiality that I have to be responsible to,” the world No. 1 said.
As the conversation turned, Djokovic was asked why he hadn’t included Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal more prominently in his decision-making process.
The Serbian says he's spoken with Nadal about the issue in recent months, adding that if Nadal and Federer wished to have their voices heard all they had to do was knock on his door.
“"It goes both ways, right?” Djokovic said. “If they wanted to talk about something they could also approach and talk about something. I talked with Rafa last September and I talked with him in November as well. I don't see any reason why he would not approach me or any other member of the player council.”
For the record, neither Federer nor Nadal is a member of the ten-player ATP Council at the moment.
“We've been selected and elected by Federer and Nadal and everyone else to be representing players' best interests,” Djokovic said to reporters on Thursday ahead of his 14th career appearance at Indian Wells. “That's how the governing structure works and I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Djokovic does believe that changes do need to occur in the governing structure of the ATP. He believes the president has too much power at times and there are too many conflicts of interest.
“The structure is such that, I personally feel it’s a bit flawed,” he said. “That we kind of have to put always the role of a president as a tiebreaker in many situations in many voting circumstances you have three votes of player board representatives, three votes from tournaments and in most of the cases it’s a conflict of interest.
"It’s a very difficult position to be in as a president because you have to kind of at times choose between the two, so that’s something I feel as a group that we have to collectively address— governing structure—I feel like it’s time for us to really make some changes. To protect the president as well and to release him from pressure and to hopefully also have some independent input on things.”
As far as the search for a new president goes, Djokovic says it will begin soon, without much urgency.
“We are in March at the moment,” he said. “Chris is going to stay in this role until the end of the year so we have time. The search process is going to commence very soon.
"The player council will be informed of the candidates. … it’s going to take time for a very serious position and role as the president of the ATP, the global tennis organization. There is no indication at the moment who that might be. It’s going to take time and hopefully we can have plenty of quality candidates to choose from.”