The outdoor courts at Wimbledon are filled with doubles matches in the middle of the first week. Spectators with court tickets, which cost around £30 at SW19, flock to these entertaining contests, drinking Pimm’s and watching tennis.If the ATP leadership has its way, doubles draws at Tour-level events will begin to shrink in 2028, as will the prize pool for the doubles team event, which has already been reduced to 80-20 in singles competition. The clamor within the players’ community, read singles, grew louder when some of them, despite being ranked in the top 40, took home less prize money than the top-ranked doubles players at the end of the season.One of the biggest challenges facing men’s doubles is their increasing separation from the individual game. The WTA Tour, which is not currently considering similar changes, has more crossover between the singles and doubles rankings. Five of the top 10 women in the doubles rankings — Taylor Townsend, Katerina Siniakova, Elise Mertens, Zhang Shuai and Jelena Ostapenko — are also highly ranked in singles competition. Among men, by contrast, only four players from the top-100 ATP singles are also in the top-100 doubles, namely Ben Shelton, Lorenzo Musetti, Lorenzo Sonego and Rinky Hijikata.It’s a completely different set of players in two categories not seen before the Bryan brothers, twins Mike and Bob Bryan, who started out as doubles specialists. This seems to be exactly what the ATP intends to rein in, players who primarily develop as doubles specialists from the get-go.The plan is to reduce the number of draws, which currently stand at 16 for doubles and 28 for singles at ATP 250 events. At the 500 level, it’s 16 doubles and 32 singles, while Masters 1000 tournaments have 16 doubles and 32 singles. This could be reduced to eight teams at the ATP 250 and 500 events and 16 teams at the Masters 1000 level.Additionally, the distribution of prize money could shift further towards singles, potentially moving to a 90-10 split, which is only a marginal change from what the Grand Slams already operate with.By 2028, the projected prize pool for couples is likely to be around $60 million. The tour is not intended to reduce overall spending, but to redistribute funds, with as much as $20 million potentially diverted to early-round payouts individually through 2028.That may affect the Indians, who have nine players in the top-200 with only three in the top-100 and one, Yuki Bhambri, in the top-50.Earlier this week, the doubles players met with their representatives on the players’ council, Marcelo Arevalo and Andrea Vavassori, to discuss the scenario facing them. Balaji, who is ranked 59th in the singles rankings, told TOI, “If they make that change, half of us won’t play tennis anymore. I have to find another job. If they reduce the draw to eight, of which two will be wild cards, what is left?”Indians were unlucky in men’s doubles at Wimbledon on Thursday, US Open semi-finalists Yuki Bhambri and Michael Venus losing to replacements Jean-Julien Rojer and Theodore Winegar 3-6, 4-6. Earlier, Sriram Balaji and his Brazilian partner Marcelo Demoliner failed to capitalize on a strong start and lost 6-3, 6-7 (2), 4-6 to Sander Gille and Sam Verbeek.Replacements Anirudh Chandrasekar and Japan’s Takeru Yuzuki lost to Ignacio Buse and Marco Trungelliti 4-6, 7-6 (3), 6-7 (7).
