The coronavirus has rapidly affected a lot of people around the world. Many are losing their jobs right now and a lot of people are coming together to help them.
Coming to Tennis, the lower ranked players are affected as well and Novak Djokovic, the head of players council is coming up with a plan to help them.
He said in a live chat with Stan Wawrinka that he spoke to both Federer and Nadal a few days ago and are coming up with something big to help the players.
“We had a long conversation about the near future of tennis, what is going to happen, how we can contribute and how we can help especially lower-ranked players, who are obviously struggling the most.
“The majority of the players who are ranked between 200, 250 in the world, and the 700th or 1,000th do not have federation support, do not have sponsors. They are completely independent and left alone. Guys who are ranked between 200-250, especially to 700…are thinking of leaving tennis right now.”
“It looks, hopefully, that there will something between $3 million (2.75 million euros) and $4.5 million that is going to be distributed,” he estimated.
Djokovic also spoke about his long term hopes of using this period to improve the tour for lower-ranked players in the future. I don't think he is wrong. pic.twitter.com/7cydQrlt4m
— Tumaini Carayol (@tumcarayol) April 18, 2020
“Maybe if we don’t have any tournaments this season, we can take a certain percentage from our prize money form Australian Open in January,” he said. “These guys are the grass roots of tennis. The future of tennis. We need to show them they still can rely on support of the top guys,” he said.
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