Erin Routliffe and Aldila Sutjiadi used their winner\u2019s press conference in Washington to voice concern that the ATP\u2019s proposed cuts to doubles could eventually reach the women\u2019s tour, even as they praised a separate ATP initiative to mic up doubles players for fan content.<\/p>\n
The pair had just beaten Katarina Klepac and Miyu Ninomiya 6-4, 6-1 to win the Mubadala DC Open doubles title, in their first tournament back together after three and a half years apart.<\/p>\n
The ATP is currently weighing a package of reforms that could take effect from 2028, including cutting Masters 1000 doubles draws from 32 teams to 16, halving ATP 500 and 250 doubles fields to eight teams, and reducing the share of prize money allocated to doubles from 20 percent to 10 percent.<\/p>\n
The proposals have already drawn public criticism from specialists including Bob and Mike Bryan and reigning Wimbledon champions Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do make our living as doubles players\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the fight, Sutjiadi did not hide her unease. \u201cIt\u2019s been, like, definitely a bit tough to hear about the new rules change maybe for the ATP, but hopefully they won\u2019t do that to us, because I feel like a lot of people love watching doubles,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do make our living as doubles players, so that would be, like, helpful to have still the same rules for the doubles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Routliffe framed the issue as one of visibility rather than rule changes alone. \u201cI think we\u2019re all trying to do our best at marketing ourselves and marketing us as players and teams, as people,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t really think they\u2019re going to watch the forehands, backhands\u2026 a lot of people do love watching doubles, because a lot of the fans actually do play doubles themselves. That\u2019s something that I think a lot of people don\u2019t realize.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the ATP\u2019s separate push to mic up doubles players during matches, Routliffe was enthusiastic, and volunteered her own team for the pilot if it were ever extended to the WTA. \u201cI actually thought the content was amazing, super interesting. I watched every video that they put out, and I thought it was really cool,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re down to do it. I think if I was mic\u2019d up, I would have to have one of those beep machines. We\u2019d be happy to do it. If it\u2019s available to us in the future, I think that we\u2019d probably be one of the first teams to be okay with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pair, who reunited around Wimbledon after both found themselves separately looking for a partner for the rest of the season, said they planned to continue playing together through the hard-court and Asian swings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erin Routliffe and Aldila Sutjiadi used their winner\u2019s press conference in Washington to voice concern that the ATP\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-842301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}