In early July, Naomi Osaka wrote an op-ed for Esquire, taking a public stance in the political debate surrounding George Floyd’s death. I think this is an interesting choice, and an uncommon one for a top tennis player in recent years, and therefore it deserves some reflection.

First and foremost, I want to clarify my position. I think that a sports website should just write about sports. And I don’t think that readers expect opinions about racism in the USA or Black Lives Matter from a tennis article. In my opinion themes like these require a knowledge that I do not possess. I have my ideas, obviously, as Osaka does, but I don’t want to write about the political side of racism.

I would like to talk about a different topic: what does it mean for Osaka to take a political position in a public way? I remember that at the end of May, before the Esquire article, Naomi posted a video on social media from Minneapolis, where she went to join the protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s death. While this message didn’t resonate as much in the press, it could be argued that it was a stronger one, because it is not common for a public figure to go to a different city to make a statement on such a politically-charged issue.

Maybe I’m wrong, but, for example, I don’t believe that Serena Williams has ever done something like this. Even her boycotting of Indian Wells has always been focused on the individual tournament and on the personal mistreatment she had experienced, rather than on a wide-ranging political issue.

Scrolling through Osaka’s Twitter page, we can easily find a few tweets, from recent weeks, that are concerned with political and social matters.

As mentioned above, it is not common that a top tennis player like Naomi (a former world N.1 and Slam winner) decides to take a public position in the political arena. We are used to great sportsmen who eschew voicing their personal ideas. The reason why they opt for this kind of approach could be personal: they might have little interest in the situation, or a wish to defend their privacy. However, the main reason that comes to mind is money, because the most popular sportsmen draw a large slice of their revenues from sponsorships, which in turn might not be exceedingly happy with their public faces potentially alienating customers.

Some weeks ago, Forbes wrote that Osaka, at 22, is at the helm of a small commercial empire. With 37.4 million dollars in revenues from last year, Naomi is the highest-paid woman athlete ever as well as the 29^th highest-paid athlete with no gender distinction.

If we look at her sources of income one-by-one, things become more interesting. Osaka makes 34 millions from sponsorships – the eighth highest figure in sports. In the tennis world, only Federer earns more from endorsements. Djokovic, Nadal, and Serena Williams earned less than Naomi in 2019.

It could be rightly assumed that every agent of a great athlete suggests that their customer keep their opinions to themselves on issues that could upset the fans, and, consequently, the sponsors. Celebrity spokespeople are asked to please the masses as much as they can. When such a person has a truly wide platform, he, or she, has to take “ecumenical” and non-divisive attitudes.

There are obviously opposite cases, sportsmen that are chosen by companies because they are against something or someone. I think, for instance, of Dennis Rodman or, more recently, of Colin Kaepernick. But it is very unlikely that they will become the most paid individuals by sponsors.

Nowadays, it’s not that relevant if some political choices could appear to pander to the mainstream (something that should be proven true): in any case, for those who have to promote a product on the market, it is not only important to connect with the majority, but also not to antagonise the minority.

Probably, the best sport testimonial of the last few decades is Michael Jordan; this infamous quote summarises the marketing zeitgeist: “Republicans buy sneakers too.” We don’t know whether the statement is true or not (Jordan may never have said it, but he has not even disowned it before it became proverbial), but the fact remains that it embodies very well the idea of ​​a spokesperson that must handle with extreme discretion certain topics, because they can become explosive.

Sport’s history teaches us that taking a public stance can be devastating for an athlete’s career. One of the best-known cases is that of Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman, who raised their fists in protests during the 200 meters medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. They paid a steep price for that image which became iconic, all over the world.

Back to tennis, maybe Martina Navratilova was the player that, during her career, stuck her neck out the most on non-sports issues. When she came out as a lesbian, according to the mentality of the time, it was a political act, with a stronger impact than it could appear today, and that was followed by consequences.

In Unmatched, the ESPN documentary dedicated to her rivalry with Chris Evert in 2013, Martina recalled that, when she began to win a lot, the American media framed her matches against Chris as a fight between good and evil. In that clash, Evert played for the good side (the “next-door girlfriend”) and Navratilova the evil (a lesbian from a Communist country):

Of course, when comparing the consequences on Navratilova’s career with those suffered by the sprinters of Mexico City, we realize that Martina had far fewer problems. And this will certainly also apply to Osaka; not only because times have changed, but also because, unlike in other disciplines, a professional tennis player is essentially an autonomous entity, who (if in a winning position) does not have to get in the crosshairs of a governing body in order to practise his or her craft.

However, it’s not all strawberries and cream by any means. A tennis player who enters in a collision course with a national federation may have to give up the Davis or the Fed Cup and most likely also the Olympics. Speaking of the Olympics, Osaka was chosen by the Tokyo 2020 committee as the face of the Games (now postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic); and who knows if the organizers of the event liked her latest public moves.

This is a window into another of Naomi’s facets: she is a Japanese player who is being vocal about American issues. Osaka was born in Japan from a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, but her family moved to the USA when she was three, so she has lived there for about 20 years.

Therefore, Osaka’s choice is perhaps a little more courageous if we consider the fact that Naomi protested in the United States as a “foreigner“. As a matter of fact, due to a peculiarity in Japanese legislation, she had to give up her US passport last year. But evidently in this case her personal history, ripe with transnational cross-contaminations, prevailed, and that is something not to be confined within the on-paper limits of a passport. She said it to herself in a part of Esquire’s article: “A single label has never been enough to describe me, but they tried anyway. Is she Japanese? American? Haitian? Black? Asian? Well, I’m all of these things together at the same time.”

Here is another element that should not be underestimated in Osaka’s decision: her political choice in favour of a plural society, expressed as a Japanese player and citizen. Let’s not forget that if Osaka has earned so much, she mainly owes it to Japanese endorsement deals. And Japanese culture and mentality are not American ones.

Naomi wrote about her relationship with her country of birth: “Japan is a very homogenous country, so tackling racism has been challenging for me. I have received racist comments online and even on TV. But that’s the minority. In reality, biracial people—especially biracial athletes—are the future of Japan. We (myself, Rui Hatchimura and others) have been embraced by the majority of the public, fans, sponsors, and media.” 

On this hand it should be remembered that last year controversy sparked for a cartoon made by a Japanese sponsor of Naomi’s, in which she was portrayed as a white-skinned player. Back then, she had expressed herself in a more accommodating way (“They should have told me about it”). It is difficult to say whether she deemed the incident as irrelevant, or whether she still felt uncomfortable expressing her own views in such a decisive way as she did recently. And this evolution leads us to the more personal aspects of her commitment.

By Alessandro Stella

The debate surrounding the cases of the coronavirus at the Adria Tour, which soon turned into a Djokovic berating platoon, is clearly the theme of the week in tennis. After the announcement of the positive test of Grigor Dimitrov, who was on the court in Zadar against Borna Coric on Saturday, the Croatian player also announced the ensuing morning that he had contracted the coronavirus. Next came Marco Panichi, Djokovic’s physio, and Kristijan Groh, Dimitrov’s coach, while according to some early rumours (confirmed by the Telegraph) Djokovic would have refused to submit to the swab in Croatia as asymptomatic to test himself directly on his return to Belgrade, together with his family members – he later tested positive, along with his wife Jelena, fellow countryman Viktor Troicki (his wife was also infected) and NBA star Nikola Jokic.

Why Djokovic is getting all the slander is easily explained: as the president of the ATP Player Council, he promoted the organising of the Adria Tour, an event slated to take place in four countries (the final two stops have now been cancelled) with his brother Djordje as the director, and whose opening fixtures, those of Belgrade and Zara, took place at full capacity and without any regard for social distancing, both on and off the court. In addition to post-match hugging, the players were also in close contact during the collateral activities of the event: a football game in Belgrade, a basketball game in Zadar, and even a night out at a local club. Even before he came under attack for promoting an exhibition without strict health protocols, the world No.1 had already been accused of having deserted at ATP Zoom meeting of June 10, in which the guidelines for the restarting of the season were discussed.

THE ADRIA TOUR DIDN’T BREAK ANY RULES

Let’s try to make order. The first question should pertain the legitimacy of the event, while the second should interrogate its propriety. Let’s start with the former: the Adria Tour was held in compliance with the Coronavirus protocols enforced in the countries that hosted the first two gigs, namely Serbia and Croatia. “It can be criticized,” Nole said during a press conference at the Belgrade event. “We can say, for example, that maybe it’s dangerous. But it is not for me to evaluate what is right from a public health standpoint: we are simply following the rules of the Serbian government.”

What Djokovic claims is true. On the website of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the policies adopted by the various countries to combat the COVID-19 pandemic can be consulted, and from the Serbian one we can learn that as of May 7 the containment measures – which for approximately a month had entailed a 12-hour curfew a month from 5pm to 5am – were relaxed. For the last month, it has no longer been necessary to provide evidence of negative testing upon entering the country, and starting from June 5 the restrictions on public participation in outdoor events have been removed, albeit with a metre of interpersonal distance still being “strongly recommended.”

To recap, there are no formal bans in Serbia, although the government still suggests – without obligation – to take some precautions. A choice, that of President Aleksandar Vučić – who has just been re-elected with a landslide majority, 62.4% of the votes – which according to some European media had the specific purpose of restoring a patina of serenity in the wake of the elections, initially scheduled for April 26 and then postponed by two months because of the virus.

As for Croatia, at the end of May the ban on organizing public events with more than 40 participants was lifted, and the feasibility of each event has since been referred to the evaluations of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, which evidently gave the go-ahead to the Adria Tour. Following the positive tests of Dimitrov and Coric, the head of the infectious diseases department Bernard Kaić spoke on television to calm the citizens of Zadar, explaining that “it is necessary to spend a lot of time with the infected person in order to become infected,” and that therefore those who were simply sitting in the stands are not at a high infection risk.

IS DJOKOVIC IN THE CLEAR THEN?

Theoretically, yes, even in the event that the legal responsibility of organizing the Adria Tour could be traced back to him. The question that cannot be overlooked, however, concerns the public role of Djokovic, and therefore the appropriateness of promoting an event that has completely disregarded social distancing (remember, strongly advised by the Serbian government) while the pandemic is still reaping victims in several parts of the planet.

In addition to being the strongest tennis player on the planet, which in itself would be enough to expect additional attention for actions and statements that may have direct consequences on the community, Djokovic is the first reference of tennis players by virtue of his role as the president of the Player Council. It is a political position in all respects, which implies political responsibilities (limited to the world of tennis, of course). Nobody forced him to take on this responsibility, which once assumed should be honoured in full.

Are we therefore assuming that Djokovic did not fully honour it in this case? Yes, to a certain extent. The Adria Tour could certainly be organized, but if the positivity of so many of the participants – there is no guarantee that they got infected by participating in the performance – had emerged on the side-lines of an event held with the suggested precautions, Djokovic would not have become the target he has become in the last few days.

One more aspect should be factored in. Djokovic rightly pointed out that it is not up to him to evaluate what is right vis-à-vis public health, but, precisely by virtue of the same principle, he doesn’t seem to have the prerogative to send such a free-for-all message like he did by planning the Adria Tour in this fashion. This does not imply that there were any bad intentions on the part of the Serbian player, just as there was no bad intentions in the words of the Italian politicians who, a few days before the outbreak of the epidemic in Lombardy, invited to everyone to go on with their lives as usual, and the same goes for British politics. Whether it is out of personal conviction, because he believes – rightly or wrongly – that the virus is no longer dangerous, or for a more Machiavellian purpose (perhaps to convince the US Open to relax its strict measures?), Djokovic has endorsed an initiative that could have had negative consequences on other people.

He was reckless, like the other players who were present, and it would be ethically incorrect not to point it out. It is one thing to be convinced that the virus never existed or is no longer dangerous, another thing is to translate this thought into actions of public interest.

To say that he was reckless doesn’t mean that he deliberately favoured the transmission of the virus, because there may also be no causal link between the Adria Tour and the early positive testing of Dimitrov and Coric, but rather that he chose to ignore the precautions who at this moment have the crucial task of guiding us at a time of collective uncertainty, of hypotheses and conflicting scientific opinions.

Djokovic does not know if the virus is still dangerous or not, as we do not know it or even those who have studied the subject for years (this should already be enough to induce in us a certain evaluative moderation, sadly forgotten). Djokovic may also be right, but it an unaware manner; he cannot be sure of the message he is sending. This is what precautions are for, however useless they may seem, and indeed the hope is exactly that one day they may be proved to have become useless – it will mean that everything has gone according to plan.

What is mistakenly interpreted as a devaluation of the scientific method and adduced as an argument in favour of the free-for-all thesis, namely that virologist A is convinced that asymptomatic cases are not dangerous for the transmission of the virus while virologist B argues otherwise, is actually the normal scientific debate that occasionally ends up in the public eye due to the planetary scope of the subject matter.

Science is actually stumbling in the dark, because that’s how it goes before the evidence makes everyone coalesce around a thesis, and we have a civic duty not to make things worse in this period of reckoning and stabilisation for researchers. If some virologists mess up in the haste of expressing themselves, if politicians and decision-makers overwhelmed by the crisis make shaky and incomprehensible choices, that doesn’t legitimise more than usual to do what we want to fight a supposed design that would enslave us to the drug companies (by the way, they are certainly not be the only corporate entities in the world that are trying to make up for missing revenues; many others have lost and will lose money because of the crisis, and are certainly not raising glasses of Dom Perignon, so the ice for this conspiracy theory feels paper-thin at best).

What the scientific community perhaps has not been able to communicate with sufficient clarity is the following concept: we do not  know what we should know about the virus yet, nor do we have a valid strategy to cure and eradicate it, so in the meantime we ask you to sacrifice a few of your liberties so that enough time can be had to find a definitive countermeasure. Planning and hosting a tennis exhibition with some kind of social distancing in the stands and fewer on-court hugs, all in all, would have been a bearable sacrifice.

Translated by Andrea Ferrero; edited by Tommaso Villa

The ATP-ITF-WTA mountain has brought forth something far bulkier than a mouse. Starting August 23, a pair of Slams and a trifecta of Master 1000 tournaments will take place over a seven-week span, hoping that Covid-19 will not strike again – an unprecedented bonanza for tennis-starved fans, even if the two Slams were to be played with a personnel shortage.  

Looking at historical precedents, 79 of the men’s Top 100 boycotted Wimbledon in 1973 in solidarity with Nikki Pilic (despite Stan Smith admitting that he wasn’t the most popular athlete on tour), but the Championships didn’t really suffer from the blow, and Jan Kodes, that year’s winner, never saw his status as a Slam champion diminished in the slightest – it should be remembered that the Czech won a pair of French Open titles and reached two more finals at Forest Hills, so his accomplishments can’t really be disputed.

Roland Garros is currently looking poised for a more competitive field, since it will take place a month later and since 75% of the ATP Top 100 and 70% of the WTA Top 30 spawns from Europe. The US Open, on the other hand, could benefit from Cincinnati being moved to Flushing Meadows, creating a three-week barrage of points and money not to be easily relinquished.

The question is: how many players will be able to scratch their way through seven weeks at such a high level, four of which laden with five-setters, all the while crossing the Atlantic halfway through and living in unfamiliar conditions? The risk of injuries to multiple players is real. The necessity to start earning again will push many to go all the way, but it will also force others to skip a few gigs to maximise their winning chances.

Each of the involved tournaments were desperate to host their respective events, lest a financial disaster might happen. Rome is the ultimate example: Angelo Binaghi, the president of the Italian federation, claimed multiple times that he was willing to move the tournament to other cities and on different surfaces just to make it happen – he deserves understanding, as do all the other promoters and owners.

Wimbledon was insured, while everybody else was not. However, the AELTC is just short of being a charity, since most of its revenue goes to the LTA, and thus it’s far easier to invest for a company whose first objective isn’t necessarily to make money, while other owners, like Madrid’s Ion Tiriac, can’t afford to be so magnanimous with their investments, and the same goes for the Italian and French federations.

The US Open (and the New York Times) immediately highlighted that Serena Williams is on board, and enthusiastically so. After losing four Slam finals, mostly as the favourite and without winning a single set – Patrick Mouratoglou explained some of the issues she’s faced – Serena’s chase for her 24th title, which would put her on par with Margaret Court, will be the leitmotif of the tournament, provided she goes far.

However, new tournament director Stacey Allaster is having to rely on the support of the entire USTA to quell the doubts of European top draws like Nadal, Djokovic, and Halep. Their misgivings are probably the reason behind the update in the rule concerning the number of staff members that the players will be allowed to take with them to the Big Apple – despite rumours of just a person being allowed, the final amount was set at three. Other concessions involve the possibility for the wealthiest to rent a flat near Corona Park instead of being confined to the JFK bubble. I can only marvel at who will be tasked to check that the players don’t go clubbing, given the precedent set in Belgrade last weekend.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the US ultimately heeded to the call of money. The best players presented heavy demands to enter the draw, and they got all they asked for.

The whole testing machine is still to be finalised, especially in terms of frequency – I asked a question on the matter during the USTA press conference on Wednesday, but it’s all still up in the air. Every official is calling on the players’ sense of responsibility but, judging from the latest exhibition tournaments, I’m not sure many actually do have one.

Moving on to the lower-ranked players, the US Open has decided to devolve $6.6 million to both tours (3.3 each), which will then spend them however they want, either to compensate the players who were damaged by the cancellation of the qualifiers, or to organise and/or support a few ATP Challengers and WTA Internationals.

The US Open will guarantee a spot in the draw to the top-ranked 120 players. Federer aside, everybody else should be game: it’s rather unlikely that dozens of clay specialists might decide to skip the hardcourt season to focus on the Madrid-Rome-Paris trio, or that a similar amount is too scared to play. Those who’ll make it to the later stages in New York might elect to skip Madrid, sure, but those who are all but certain to bow out early will definitely participate in both.

Life is going to be hard for those who won’t make the main draws of the Slams. After four months of inactivity, these players will be forced to stay put even longer, since the Challengers’ schedule is still scrambled. Not just that: while the early rumours pointed to the tours being active in December, that now no longer seems to be the case. On paper, something could be done after August 14, perhaps a $150k could be organised in Orlando during the Washington week…

Even if it were possible to plan a few Challengers, though, these would be so few that no players with a lower rank than 180 would be able to break in before the cut-off. In addition, we need to remember that only the winners of such events make relevant money, while entering the main draw of a Slam automatically means $50k, they could make twice as much, should they win their first-round match – that’s without speaking of the different standings of these achievements. Anyway, the bottom-line is that the omens aren’t great for those who are ranked outside the Top 200.

Illya Marchenko, world No.200

As largely expected, business won, even though the ATP top brass somewhat “pretended” to have chosen one of two options during last week’s conference call in order to appease the players ranked between the 200th and the 400th spot, when, in realty, the other has never been viable, e.g. the possibility to cancel Cincinnati and play the usual three qualifying rounds in New York. The first option meant that the same players would feature in both events, while the second meant throwing a bone to some players ranked outside the upper echelon of the sport.

The ATP picked the former exclusively for financial reasons, as a Master 1000 event means TV rights, sponsorships, and money, while the qualies’ revenues are usually non-existent. Moreover, a few of the top dogs (Shapovalov among them) began to complain about having to debut in a five-set format, and the ATP didn’t miss the chance to placate them, while de facto throwing everyone else under the bus. Sure, the US Open offered a lump sum as compensation, but who knows how it will be spent and according to what criteria.

The point system is being scorched as well, because of all its contradictions and idiosyncrasies. It would be just right for a player to have a full year to defend or improve on its previous results (therefore defending and improving on his/her own revenue), but now someone like Gianluca Mager, who scored big in February, will only have the months spanning from August to January to benefit from his wins, while the Fognini’s of this world, who built their ranking in 2019, will keep their spot until the end of 2020 and all the way to April 2021 – quite a difference between 5 and 16 months. To be clear, however, there still is no clarity on how the rankings will be assessed and when the points will be “thawed”.

I will finish by pointing out the Paris Master 1000 tournament is currently slated to go ahead between November 1 and 8, about three weeks after the end of the French Open. In the same city. With the same players. Money goes to money, an old truth that I still have to see refuted.

Article translated by Tommaso Villa