Novak Djokovic has warned tennis may lose its crown as the ‘king or queen of racquet sports’ amid a boom in accessible variants like padel.
The seven-time Wimbledon champion fears grassroots tennis is ‘endangered’ as courts are torn down and replaced by those catering to popular offshoots of the sport.
Padel is a cross between tennis and squash played on small, indoor courts with softer balls where you serve underhand and can use the walls.
Over 30 million people compete worldwide and fans include Andy Murray, David Beckham and Annabel Croft.
Another variant, pickleball, played outdoors and without walls, is also challenging tennis’ dominance with Kim Kardashian among famous supporters.
Djokovic, 37, said there is not enough effort to make tennis ‘accessible’ or ‘affordable’ which has left it ‘endangered’ at a club level.
‘Tennis is the king or queen of all the racket sports, that’s true, but on a club level tennis is endangered,’ the Serbian number one said.
‘If we don’t do something about it, as I said, globally or collectively, padel – or pickleball in the States – they’re going to convert all the tennis clubs into padel and pickleball because it’s just more economical.
‘You have one tennis court. You can build three paddle courts on one tennis court. You do the simple math.
‘It’s just much more financially viable for an owner of a club to have those courts.’
Invented in Mexico in 1969, padel has the same scoring system as tennis but is played with thicker, stringless rackets and lower pressured balls.
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A game is started by bouncing the ball and hitting underarm below waist height. After the first return each player may use the walls much like in squash.
The number of players worldwide has more than doubled in ten years and the global business is now worth some £1.7billion.
It has become extremely popular in Britain in the last few years, with new courts springing up in place of five-a-side football pitches.
Meanwhile pickleball has exploded in America where there are 4.8million players and it has been declared the official state sport of Washington.
Djokovic said: ‘Tennis is a very global sport and it’s loved by millions of children that pick up a racquet and want to play – but we don’t make it accessible.
‘We don’t make it so affordable. Especially in countries like mine that doesn’t have a strong federation, that has Grand Slam or history or big budgets.
‘I think collectively we all have to come together and understand how to maintain the sport’s, let’s say, foundation.
‘Or create a new foundation, a cornerstone of really what tennis is about, which is the base level, right, the club level.’ In the UK the number of padel courts has soared tenfold since 2019 to 502 this year with over 200,000 amateur players across the country.
But tennis remains dominant with 87million players globally as of 2017.
Djokovic was quizzed on whether tennis should switch to a three-set format to try and gain more young fans.
The sport has tried to change its image to attract new supports in recent years with an insider Netflix series, Break Point.
It was hoped the show would do for tennis what Drive to Survive did for F1.
Djokovic argued that tennis should keep five sets at least in the last rounds of a grand slam because of the ‘excitement’ but agreed the sport needs innovation.
‘When we look at Formula 1, for example, and what they have 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.
