Roger Federer: “Tennis is Doing Well at the End of the Day”

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were re-elected to the ATP Player Council last week following a turbulent year in the politics of the ATP Tour. The duo along with Jurgen Melzer joined the council after Jamie Murray, Robin Haase and Sergiy Stakhovsky resigned from their position in June.

In a pre-tournament interview with Prakash Amritraj at Tennis Channel at the Western and Southern Open 2019 in Cincinnati, Roger Federer talked about the need to re-join the ATP Player Council with Rafael Nadal.

The Swiss Maestro also revealed the shortcomings of the council in the past few months and the changes he can bring along with Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal on board.

Roger Federer felt an opportunity to join the ATP Leadership board when Jamie Murray, Robin Haase, and Sergiy Stakhovsky resigned from their role at the council. He said, “Rafa and I felt like there was a small opportunity after some guys retired from the council, which was unfortunate to see after Wimbledon and I didn’t like seeing that. I just thought, well that opens the door maybe for us to join the council.”

The 38-year-old also revealed how he and Rafael Nadal decided to join the council together. He recalled his conversation with the Spaniard and said, “I called Rafa up and I asked what do you think? I would only do it with you and he said, ‘well I’d only do it if you come too’.”

“That’s when we send in our proposal that, how about having us joined the group again and this is when Novak and the rest of the council guys had to decide if it was better to have us or then not,” said the 20-time Grand Slam Champion.

As the trio will begin their roles with immediate effect, Roger Federer explicated his plans on what he will try to do differently on the board. He continued, “I’d like to support the good ideas they have and maybe bad ideas they’re having at the moment, let’s talk about them or how we could do it differently.”

The world No.3 further explained where the council is lagging behind as he wants to take the initiative to set the shortcomings straight. Federer elucidated, “Tennis is doing well at the end of the day. So, we don’t have to talk things bad but it’s been a bit rocky on the sort of the communication side of things.”

He further added, “So, I think to have Novak, me and Rafa, and the other top guys and other guys on the council and everybody want to do the good thing, the right thing for the tour. I think it just makes things much simpler, having us all together on the council them sort of some away, some on it.” 

Earlier, Rafael Nadal had resigned from his position of the Vice President of the ATP Player Council, when Roger Federer was serving as the President in 2012. According to the reports, Nadal was exhausted by an inability to pass reforms that he requested, such as a 2-year ranking system.

However, Federer believes that their last tenure at the council was successful and expects the same now. He concluded, “We’ve been on the council before and things work great. I don’t know if this is like five or ten years ago now but we worked very well together so I expect the same now.”