Hi on that doubles/mixed doubles debate. I totally agree with you. Opelka and Isner make themselves look like petty American men who can't win a thing but they have the audacity to complain about doubles. Doubles/mixed make way way way less money than singles so those entitled "American" Karens who will never win a slam or a big title because they are simply not good enough are complaining about people who are trying to make a living and get way less for that. Plus line you said it's not advertised/shown and some doubles players have tried to get it to be shown. People enjoy doubles and what Opelka and Isner are saying is completely wrong. I have been watching more doubles this year than I have watched singles.
I sort of rambled in this reply and didn't even get to the main point of your ask until much later on so i'll shove this under the cut but i basically went on about the prize money difference and audience and tv and so on.
(Erm this is way longer than I intended.... i start actually talking about your ask at around paragraph 13....hmmm sorry??!)
Doubles is really good fun and always good entertainment especially with the format they've got going at the moment which is two normal sets with a deciding point at Deuce and then if they get to 1 set all then it's a match tiebreak. It's quick and fun. I don't always agree with the format because it is designed to speed the game up, I think I'd like advantages to be played.
I've been going on about the doubles prize money for ages. I'll take Wimbledon as an example. If you win the doubles (single gender) then you get 480k to split between two players - 240k each. Winning the mixed you get 100k to split - 50k each. If you were to win both of those events then congrats you're taking away 290k!
Singles players get 1.7 million. "Yeah but doubles players there's two of them on the court." Okay so say we halved the singles that's 850k. It's fairly bad considering how much money there is in the sport. Even with 850k I'd imagine that a singles player can afford to pay their whole team + travel expenses (although some will probably have a sponsor that's a travel company which may cover that) and have a reasonable chunk left over to go in the bank.
290k...You're not looking at taking home a lot from that (remember this is winning both the doubles and mixed doubles). They've still got to pay their coach - Maybe the players share the same coach great! But if they don't then you're not splitting that cost. Still gotta pay their physio, their nutritionist, psychologist, etc. Travel expenses (doubles is a smaller sport (sport within a sport i'm trying to make this easy to understand) so they're less likely to have travel sponsors even sponsors in general - most will probably only have a kit and racket sponsor.) There's not a lot they're gonna have left over to put into the bank.
An article from 2020 broke down what tennis players will roughly spend their money on in the tennis world. (I'm not doing extensive research because I am too lazy I might do at a later date if I feel like it). The cost of playing tennis is between 175k and 2mil (dollars). Let's take that low end and subtract it from our totals above.
Singles player 890k (remember I halved it because of the 'doubles players should get less because there's two of them on the court' bs - in reality they got 1.7 mil) take away the ~129k (converted to £) and we're left with a very nice 761k.
Our doubles player who has won both the doubles and mixed doubles - 290k minus 129k is 161k still very nice but that's if you've won both titles.
What if you only won the men's or women's? 240k minus 129k is 111k.
Still a fair bit in regular money terms but it's not in tennis terms. It's not in sport terms. And I went for the low end of that expenses range. And I'm only talking about the champions. Singles players are earning 111k in round 3 (I haven't halved that one). Doubles players in round 3 are getting 30k per team, 15k each.
I mentioned it in the tags of that last post about Joe Salisbury. I'll compare his money earned this year to that of a hypothetical men's singles player (I don't think anyone's got the exact same results as him so we're making a player up). I'm only going to look at slams. And I'll convert all the money to pounds or it's gonna get confusing.
Australian Open. - Final (+ roughly 184k for Joe) (+811k for our singles player)
French Open - Second Round (+7.3k for Joe) (+71.3k for our singles player)
Wimbledon - Semi Final (+60k for Joe) (+465k for the singles)
US Open - Champion (+243k for Joe) (+1.8mil for the singles)
Joe - £494 300
Singles Player - Just over 3 million.
Most tennis players spend in the range of 147k to 367k to play tennis (those numbers are roughly converted to pounds). That's barely a dent to the singles player. It's a sizeable chunk to Joe. Joe is now incredibly successful but before 2019 he'd been considering retirement because the cost was just too high. Doubles pays very, very little in comparison to singles.
It's not even given the same TV rights. Most singles tournaments are televised there will be a rare one or two that aren't or are only available on TennisTV or something. Doubles is usually played at these tournaments...It's not normally televised though. I could go on a rant about that as well but I'll stay focussed on the prize money for now and also come back to your ask lmao.
I agree with Opelka in that tennis does need to put more money into the lower levels of singles, it's a very hard life in the lower ranks of tennis. Cult Tennis did a fairly good video on what it costs to be a singles player ranked outside the top 1000. Even ranked outside the top 200 is incredibly hard for players.
I think tennis just has a general problem when it comes to things like money where you see the doubles players are struggling even with decent appearances at grand slams (Joe was considering retirement until he got a semi final at Wimbledon in 2018...That shows just how far you have to get in a tournament for it to be worthwhile in doubles).
Going back to mixed doubles. I think tennis needs it and I think the players really enjoy it. I mean you saw at the Olympics just how much fun players who wouldn't normally play doubles were having. (Although I do have a slight problem with how mixed doubles pairings qualified for the Olympics but I'll save that.) I think if you go back and look at highlights from the Hopman Cup you'll see how much the players are enjoying it. (Isner did play the Hopman Cup and seemed to enjoy it so jot that down Reilly...)
Any mixed events that take place and you see how much the players enjoy being around each other. For example, the second battle of the brits last year I think it was said multiple times that the mixed format was really fun and we wanted more of it!
I'm not sure why Opelka has chosen now to open his mouth and bash mixed doubles when the reaction to mixed is pretty positive! The players have fun playing it, the fans have fun watching it (I mean the mixed doubles final at wimbledon had a considerable crowd in) and the matches are entertaining! It is the only time in this sport in normal competition that the men and women play each other and it's fun! Are we allergic to fun now Reilly?
Do you know what makes this worse? Reilly Opelka has never made it past the 4th round of a grand slam and has two career titles at the ATP 250 level. Ranked 20th. He's made £2.1 million.
Joe who's won two grand slams (in the men's doubles), and reached the quarter final of the french twice and the semi finals of wimbledon twice, and has 8 titles (2 250's, 3 500's, 1 1000 and 2 Grand Slams) and has two mixed doubles titles. Ranked 3rd. £1.5 million.
It just makes me sad that you've got someone loud saying this shit because it hurts doubles, it hurts the sport as a whole.
There's a bit at the top of that screenshot that was slightly cut off where Opelka's talking about Isner and saying how the press like to make snide comments even though Isner's been top 20 consistently. He's won one major title which was the Miami Open in 2018. I'll admit he's been fairly consistently near the top 20. He's just not exciting to watch and I don't think he'll win a grand slam. That's why the comments come because he's just not exciting, the majority of his game is big hitting.
Opelka's the same. He's still fairly young so there is still time for him to bring in something other than big hitting and if he doesn't then I reckon his career will go much the same as Isner's. They're both talented players you don't get to Top 30, Top 20 without talent obviously but there's nothing about them that makes me want to watch them. (When Isner was closer to the Top 10 he was slightly more interesting to watch but he's not near the Top 10 currently because he was sort of filling this gap in between the Big 3 and the young guys coming through. Now the young guys have caught up and overtaken him.)
It's just bizarre to me that he's decided to go off on one at mixed doubles which is exciting, the players have fun playing it, the matches are great, if it was given more coverage then the fans would come and the interest would come but it's people like Opelka that are holding that back.
If we do the DILFs we also have to do the Top 5 baby boy ask. 😂❤
LOVE IT EVEN MORE!! 🤣
1. Alexis Saelemaekers (he has to take number one of course <3)
2. Sandro Tonali (he's a mean looking baby but he's a baby xD)
3. Patrick Cutrone (a baby boy? technically yes)
4. Nicolò Zaniolo (the way I would love to call this dude baby boy because I KNOW it would piss him off so much 😌)
5. Nicolò Barella (he's so baby and I love him dearly precious child)
well, my first celebrity crush was Christian Bale (yeah, Equilibrium and Batman Begins hit me hard), since then it was some actors and then also footballers 🤔
but my crushes are always really mild, I'm more interested in fandom/canon/pairings than in a certain celebrity/character
Welp, for me that damages her credibility even further. Plus it just makes her look bad as a person. Even if he did do something to you, and you’re hurt and acting out, is calling him gay the right way to express that anger? Or even an acceptable one? It’s so petty and childish. Maybe I’m too old for this “scandal”.
I use to, but stopped for awhile and I always see them on my dash and tell myself that looks interesting I am going to read it and then I never do. I like reading I just need to make more time for it.
