Wimbledon will offer to create a new player council in a meeting with leading player representatives scheduled for Roland Garros next week, with Tim Henman having intervened in the ongoing row over grand slam prize money.<\/p>\n
The Guardian has learned the former British No 1 and All England Club Board member held talks with several top players, including representatives of the WTA Players\u2019 Council at the Italian Open in Rome earlier this month. A formal meeting between Wimbledon officials and player agents at the French Open<\/a> will follow.<\/p>\n Some players may join the meeting depending on their tournament schedules with Jannik Sinner\u2019s representative, Alex Vittur, one of several leading agents to have confirmed their attendance.<\/p>\n Wimbledon, the French Open and the US Open have been open to meeting the top players\u2019 representatives to discuss concerns over prize money, welfare and representation since December. But the representatives have insisted they will not discuss the formation of a player council until the grand slam organisers address requests for a greater percentage of revenue for players and contributions to welfare initiatives, such as pension funds. In March, the representatives rejected a proposed joint meeting at the Indian Wells Masters with the three slams on those grounds. It is not clear if Wimbledon will entertain those requests in Paris.<\/p>\n Wimbledon will offer to create its own player council and reaffirm their commitment to growing the sport and increasing prize money, with this year\u2019s Championships prize fund to be revealed at a press conference on 11 June. The players\u2019 representatives will also meet with the French Tennis<\/a> Federation and United States Tennis Association, but Tennis Australia will not be involved in any discussions in Paris.<\/p>\n In a sign of the sport\u2019s fractured governance the Australian Open has aligned with the Professional Tennis Players\u2019 Association, which is suing the other three grand slam governing bodies in New York\u2019s district court over alleged restrictive practices in a separate dispute.<\/p>\n It is unclear if Henman\u2019s intervention has helped bring the players to the negotiating table, but given his status in the sport the 51-year-old may have helped to smooth relations. Henman is understood to have met representatives of the WTA\u2019s Player Council in Rome, and is a regular presence on both tours and at slams due to his media commitments.<\/p>\n Wimbledon\u2019s tournament director, Jamie Baker, and player relations director, Laura Robson, were also in Rome and both have good relations with the current crop of players.<\/p>\n The dispute has been rumbling since last year\u2019s French Open when a delegation of players, including Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff, urged executives from all the slams to increase their prize funds to 22% of revenue by 2030.<\/p>\n Following a modest 7% increase in prize money by Wimbledon that had already been budgeted for in the aftermath of Paris, the US Open and Australian Open increased their prize funds by 20% and 16% respectively, but the French Open\u2019s announcement of a 9.5% increase this year led to a further escalation in tensions.<\/p>\n The players responded by claiming last month that the real-terms increase as a percentage of the tournament\u2019s revenue was 5.4%, as the French Open\u2019s income last year increased by 14% to \u20ac395m.<\/p>\n