Can Novak Djokovic bail the ATP out of a jam?

Tennis Channel Live: The race to the ATP Finals heats up

Whether he knows it or not, Novak Djokovic isn’t playing just for himself in these waning days of the tennis season. He is also competing to protect the credibility of the ATP in a year rocked by turbulence.

The Serbian star already has assured himself a berth in the eight-player ATP Finals in Turin. That’s due to the exemption that allows a Grand Slam champion in any given year to leapfrog over a player who has earned his spot the old-fashioned way: by finishing in the Top 8 in an annual, points-based race.

The problem therein is that, through no fault of Djokovic’s, honoring the exemption may not be justifiable. Wimbledon did not exist in any institutional way for the ATP and WTA this year due to the tournament’s ban of players from Russia and Belarus. In response, the player organizations stripped the game’s flagship tournament of ranking points—raising the question: If the tours blackballed Wimbledon, how can they justify welcoming its champions?

The problem is unique to the ATP. The WTA Finals are a mirror-image of the ATP product in almost all ways but the qualification procedure. The eight top-ranked players qualify, end of story. It’s clear and unequivocal, but as a result, Elena Rybakina, the Wimbledon champion, did not make the cut this year (you have to feel for her, but it’s a subject best left for another time).

“I am usually okay with the exemption for a Grand Slam champion, because if you win a Slam it’s a big deal. But this year is tricky,” Michael Russell, coach of Taylor Fritz, told me. At the moment, Fritz, ranked eighth in the Race to Turin, would be out of the event due to the exemption for No. 10-ranked Djokovic.

“I don’t want to say it’s ‘hypocritical,’” Russell added, “but if there were no points at Wimbledon (and a number of serious contenders were absent) and then you offer the winner a spot in Turin, where there are points, how do you justify that?”

The short answer is, you can’t, especially under the current, unsettled geopolitical condition. The bigger question may be whether it’s even fair to offer exemptions. It’s not right that, in the ATP, the competition to qualify is a race—until it’s not. Yet winning a major is such a towering accomplishment that it’s difficult to imagine a year-end shootout without those title holders.

“I don’t feel a shred of indecision about this,” Craig Boynton, coach of Hubert Hurkacz (currently ninth in the Race to Turin) told me. “Novak deserves to be in, 100 percent, even if Hubie finishes at eight and gets bumped out. We haven’t spent any sleepless moments worrying about that.”

Brad Gilbert, the ESPN analyst, sees no valid objection to the ATP’s criteria, either. He said, “This has been the rule the sport has always had. You win a major and also finish Top 20, you are in. It’s totally fair. Zero problem.”

True enough, but there’s a lot of space on the spectrum between simple and fair rules and those compromised by carve-outs. However you feel about the Rybakina case, the WTA has scrupulously followed its own rules and is living with the consequences of stripping Wimbledon of points. The ATP is trying to eat its cake and have it, too.

These year-end developments have led many to take a long, hard look at the tours’ retaliation against Wimbledon. If anything, the times are growing more rather than less uncertain, so rankings points, while not exactly an existential issue, are unlikely to go away. What happens, for example, if Russian and Belarussian nationals are suddenly denied visas for international travel?

Russell echoed many interested parties when he said, “The Slams have to have [ranking] points. Wimbledon should have had points. There are other ways for the ATP to make a statement.”

If the ATP decision to deny ranking points is moot, tour officials added insult to perceived injury by failing to mitigate or address (as far as the public record goes) the repercussions of the retaliation against Wimbledon. There certainly were options.

“Okay fine, they took away the rankings points,” Gilbert said. “They could at least have left Race [to Turin] points, or somehow pro-rated it, 75 cents on dollar, or something like that.”

The ATP is understandably keen to retain the services of its top attractions, even if that calls for some light thumb pressure on the scales. There’s nothing new in that. Tennis is a star-based sport, and the proverbial “level playing field” is always canted a few degrees in favor of the haves over the have-nots. Usually, that process is seamless and, as in the case of choice court assignments and playing times, justifiable. This process has been a little different.

“You can look at what happened at Wimbledon and get the sense that people in the organizations involved could have done a whole lot better,” Boynton said, noting that it’s not the fault of the players that there were no ranking points awarded. Largely, though, Boynton, like most other ATP folks, remains pro-exemption.

The coach has a simple rebuke for any player who might feel the exemption is unfair: “You should have won a Slam. You were in the draw. You had the same chance as anyone else.”

Besides, Boynton said, exemptions only rubber-stamp the obvious. The 2,000 points awarded to a Grand Slam singles champion practically guarantees him a place in the Finals. As of Thursday, the eighth-ranked player in the ATP Race to Turin—Fritz—had 2,910 ranking points. It’s nearly impossible to envision a Grand Slam champion not cobbling together another 1,000 points or so over the rest of the year. (According to the ATP rules, a Grand Slam champion also needs to be ranked inside the Top 20 to qualify for the exemption.)

The exemption rule has kicked in only three previous times, but all in a span of just five years. In 2001, Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic, ranked No. 13, displaced Tommy Haas. The following year produced another exemption, for No. 11-ranked French Open champion Albert Costa (replacing Tim Henman). And in 2004, No. 10-ranked French Open champ Gaston Gaudio qualified via exemption over Andre Agassi.

The bigger problem for the ATP might be that if points continue to be weaponized, we could end up with two or more Grand Slam champions eligible for exemption, even though the ATP rule allows for just one. This has already been a problem on a number of occasions in the ATP Finals doubles event. In 2014, Wimbledon champions Jack Sock and Vasek Pospisil were obliged to sit out as alternates, while French Open champions Julien Benneteau and Édouard Roger-Vasselin made the cut.

Most years, the No. 8 place in the rankings at season’s end is a great prize. But in 2022, it may end up looking more like a booby prize.