Tennis star Novak Djokovic is worried about his beloved sport. Djokovic, 37, expressed his concerns after his Centre Court win at Wimbledon 2024 on Saturday, July 6. “Tennis is endangered,” he told reporters. “If we don’t do something about it, globally or collectively, paddle — pickleball in the States — they’re gonna convert all the tennis clubs into paddle and pickleball.”
State of Tennis
Earlier in the press conference, Djokovic discussed the overall state of tennis, emphasizing the need for improvements to grow its audience. “Tennis, on one hand, is in a good place, but at the same time, when we look at Formula 1 for example and what they’ve done in terms of marketing, in terms of growth of the sport — in terms of the races around the world and how popular they are — I think we need to do a better job on our respective tours,” he said.
Tennis is Endangered But Also Historic
The Serbian athlete noted that “we are lucky to be a very historic and a very global sport,” but added, “I think there’s a huge space for growth. We’re quite fractioned as a sport.” He continued, “There are quite a bit of things for us to collectively look at and try to improve it. We need to grow the number of players that live from this sport.”
Pickleball More Viable?
Djokovic explained that pickleball, despite tennis being the “king or queen of all racquet sports,” is more “economical” for club owners, which influences their decisions. “You can build three paddle courts on one tennis court,” he said. “Do the simple math. It’s just much more financially viable for the owner of the club to have those courts.”
Read our Z Sisters Pickleball post by clicking the link below!
The Key Differences Between Tennis and Pickleball
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We Need to Address This!
Novak Djokovic added, “In the grand scheme of things, we need to address all these challenges and issues. Because they’ve been out there for a while. I don’t think we’ve been addressing it in the proper way.”
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I’ve never been a tennis fan and didn’t really know what pickleball was all about except my FB friends from LA are champions on it. That video was very helpful in showing the differences.
Pickleball is really fun and a LOT of people are enjoying it. Thanks Martha!
Interesting observation. We’ll have to wait and see.
I think both games can exist together. One should not threaten the other! I love tennis, but now I play pickleball.