The Laver Cup is a team competition where, upon invitation, a group of male tennis players from Europe are matched against some from the rest of the world.
It has attracted most of the top players and been a huge success.
However, it is not good for tennis.
It is a millionaires benefit, and the ATP is allocating a large slice of its budget to ensuring bank accounts of these privileged athletes are increased substantially.
In fact the Laver Cup is a bunch of exhibition matches, having no effect on rankings points.
The event is placed amid the tennis season, and is competing with tournaments that actually are important for rankings, and for some players end of year finals spots.
The ATP should be devoting more resources and prize money to these events instead of helping prop up an exhibition which can stand on its own feet with existing sponsorship, and the names of those competing. Roger Federer is inextricably linked to it.
The Laver Cup concept is fine, but the event should be held in the off season, and this would allow its competitors to be available for ATP tour tournaments which today are clashing.
In 2021, while the millionaires were happily having a hit with each other and heavily lining their pockets, Hubert Hurkacz was winning a 250 tournament in France for valuable points, but earning a relative pittance.
Others in France were battling to earn a living in that same event, also in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the world.
Priorities for the ATP should be to look to the welfare of all its players, especially those lower in the rankings, where prize money and sponsorship offer barely enough to survive.
The Laver Cup, while exciting to witness, is sadly symptomatic of a class division existing and growing in professional tennis.
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