The Decade to Come: 2020 Vision

"I know that Sloane got elected because every day she came up to me and asked me to vote for her,” Naomi Osaka says with a laugh when asked about the new WTA Players’ Council.

Former US Open champion Sloane Stephens is one of five fresh faces to join the eight-person council, and her decision to take a seat at the table as a Top 20 players’ representative comes as no surprise. The 26-year-old American is opinionated, outspoken, and has shown she is unafraid of using her voice to call out injustice, or try to effect change.

Earlier this year, when Petra Martic, an opponent she had just defeated, was filmed by behind-the-scenes Australian Open cameras while slumped on the floor crying, it was Stephens who went to the powers that be to complain.

“I had to go. I was standing up for my girls,” Stephens later explained. “I’m not afraid to say what I feel or how I feel it needs to be said. If no one was going to speak up for her, I was.”

Stephens added that it wasn’t the first time she felt compelled to address such situations. Now that she’s part of the Players’ Council, it certainly won’t be the last.

Just a couple of days into the start of her term, Stephens was talking with Canadian Vasek Pospisil, a member of the ATP Player Council, at the US Open’s player garden. Pospisil has been at the forefront of a campaign demanding a larger share of revenues from the Grand Slams, and he reached out to some members of the WTA Players’ Council to share his ideas, and see if the women would like to join forces with the men in the fight.

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“If you talk about the Grand Slams, it’s tournaments with women and men. I just feel like it’s counterproductive to not communicate with them,” Pospisil told reporters at Flushing Meadows. “I’m really super impressed with Sloane, to be honest. I had some good conversations with her.”

In addition to Stephens, other new members of the WTA council include Madison Keys, Donna Vekic, Aleksandra Krunic and Gabriela Dabrowski. They join Johanna Konta, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Kristie Ahn. It’s a young lineup, with all eight ages 28 or under, and it mimics a youth movement that has taken place on the court, with 21-year-old Osaka, 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu and 23-year-old Ashleigh Barty all having won Grand Slam titles in 2019.

During the US Open, Pospisil also reached out to Dabrowski, a fellow Canadian, and Konta. It appears that, moving forward, there will be further collaboration between players from both tours when it comes to common interests at the majors.

As for goals specific to the WTA, most players agree that scheduling, marketing and better conditions for lower-ranked players are at the top of the agenda.

“I feel like the girls that are below us that struggle a bit more, they deserve a little bit more, because they are part of our tour,” Stephens explains. “Having a good experience when I was 17 and 18 really molded my mindset of how I am now.

“I think now the tides are changing a little bit, it’s getting a little younger. I just think they need a little bit of support. My biggest thing will be just making sure they get that support.”

Ahn, a Stanford graduate with a degree in Science, Technology and Society, was part of the previous council that included longtime members Venus Williams and Victoria Azarenka. When Ahn first joined, she had been particularly impressed by how the higher-ranked players were looking out for the lower-ranked group, and how the mission statement was to make the tour better as a whole.

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“It’s tough,” Ahn says about the current environment. “The 150th ranked player, at least, should be able to make a living playing this sport, not just scraping by, because that to me is just unacceptable.

“Even at the top, if you look at what the top tennis players make compared to other sports, without sponsorships, it’s like, how can we make tennis grow bigger? How can we get more people, not just at the Slams, but also to WTA tournaments? How can we market better? How can we present ourselves more as a package to the outside viewer?”

Marketing the tour is high on everyone’s list of priorities, but Krunic, a Russian-born Serb, believes it must come hand in hand with refining the tour calendar. Players should only compete when they are fit enough to play so they can present the best possible product to the audience, Krunic says. At present, she feels fines for withdrawals from tournaments are too strict and excessive, forcing women to play when they aren’t ready to do so.

While the WTA tour has developed a reputation of being a cutthroat, every player-for-herself kind of environment, many say this is a misconception, including Vekic, who proudly states she is friendly with “90 percent of the locker room.” The Croatian believes she can help improve com- munication between the tour, the tournaments and the players, and would like to add a “Top 100 meeting” to the schedule, suggesting Beijing as a possible location. In this hypothetical, the tour’s Top 100 would congregate and discuss important matters towards the end of each season.

“Some girls I talk to, they don’t really care about anything, but I’m hoping to change that,” Vekic says. “No one from the Player Council ever spoke to me before, as a player, and I found that strange. I definitely will try to change that and try to get players more interested, to see what their opinions are.”

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Krunic, who is currently outside the Top 100, has experienced both sides of the coin, having once been ranked inside the Top 40. She points out how the majority of players competing at an International-level tournament walk away from the event having spent more money than they made.

“I would go to Nanchang, spend $1,000 on my flight, $2,000 on my coach and his hotel—and when you look at the prize money [for losing in the quarters], take 25 percent off in tax, I’m on zero,” she reveals. “And that’s average.

“It’s not easy to play the tournament when you actually, most of the time, don’t earn money that week. If you’re in the semis, that’s four players [who can make money that tournament]. So out of 32 players, roughly 15 percent earn money that week. It’s tough; you’re less motivated, of course you’re frustrated.”

Krunic doesn’t specifically blame the tour or the tournament owners for the current situation, but believes that, together, all stakeholders can make a positive change. To her, promoting all players, not just those in the Top 100, is essential.

“If people know they should watch the No. 80, No. 160 and No. 10-ranked players for the same reasons every player has some good sides, points or shots or qualities—only then will we have a better tour, more money, more sponsors,” Krunic says. “We can’t rely on only 10 players because our product is way too big for that.”

The tour’s main stakeholders are the players and the tournaments; oftentimes, their interests are at odds. WTA CEO Steve Simon is confident all of their goals can be aligned, and has faith in the current crop of council members to see that through.

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“I really don’t feel there’s a disconnect [between the tournaments and players],” Simon says. “The challenge is that the players view things through a certain set of eyes, and the tournaments through a certain set of eyes, as players have a tendency to be more short-term and tournaments more long-term in nature.

“I feel players and tournaments are working together very constructively and very respectful of each other’s needs, trying to find solutions that, at the end of the day, provide for a better product for fans.”

There may be a lot to work on when it comes to the WTA achieving its full potential, but with the young minds of the tour finding their voices, and bringing their energy and commitment to the cause, the outlook can only be positive.