By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday November 12, 2021
Novak Djokovic’s fledgling PTPA– Professional Tennis Players Association – is into its second year of existence, and making significant strides. But Novak Djokovic says the organization, which aims to give tennis players 100 percent player representation, still has a long way to go.
"PTPA is not where we want to be in terms of the long-term goals," Djokovic said. "There is still a long way ahead of us, but we also did not expect to establish ourselves as a system and as a structure within the tennis ecosystem so quickly."
Djokovic says that the challenges still persist, and the headwinds are still strong.
"Maybe media, or players or someone else expected things to happen a bit quicker on the PTPA side, but it's just not possible, because when the PTPA was founded it was not acknowledged by really any other governing body or association in tennis, so that's kind of the case still, in tennis, and that makes our journey a bit more challenging."
In 2021, The Professional Tennis Players Association was formally founded as a not-for-profit corporation in Canada that addresses player challenges and influences fair change within the business of professional tennis. The organization has done its best to grow support and to delay a vote on the ATP’s 30-year plan, which would make sweeping changes to the framework of the sport, but still leave the players with a less than desirable voice and percentage of profits.
Djokovic says that the PTPA is still growing and hopes to play a larger role in the politics of the sport in the future.
"We are not stopping here, we are going along, we are employing more people in the structure, in the leadership and executive positions, people with experience, and we'll be making some announcements soon, so we are going along and we are determining what the different strategies may be depending on the reaction we get from everyone involved in the ecosystem. We want to, as we said all along, to be acknowledged, respected and accepted as a 100 percent player association in this sport because we need that players need to have 100 percent representation, which they don't at the moment.