Novak Djokovic has warned that club tennis is “in danger” as alternative sports such as cricket and pickleball grow in popularity.
The seven-time Wimbledon champion said “we are still doing a very bad job” at keeping tennis at a “basic level” and its future was under threat.
“Tennis is a very global sport, played by millions of kids who pick up a racket and want to play, but we’re not making it accessible. We’re not going to make it so affordable, “The world number two said after defeating Australia’s Alexei Popyrin on Center Court on Saturday.
Djokovic called for a foundation to be set up to protect tennis at club level as it faces competition from other sports. Padel, a hybrid of squash and tennis, is one of the fastest growing sports in the UK, with over 500 purpose-built courts and 200,000 active players, including celebrities such as Stormzy, David Beckham, Jurgen Klopp, and more. Even two-time Wimbledon champion Andy Murray.
Created in Mexico in the 1960s, it is played similarly to tennis, but the court is one-third the size and has a back wall to bounce the ball off. According to the International Padel Federation’s 2024 report, there are 30 million athletes and 63,000 courts worldwide.
In the United States, pickleball – a combination of tennis, badminton and table tennis – is the fastest-growing sport, with an estimated 13.6 million players, including Larry David, the Kardashians and Leonardo DiCaprio Prio and other celebrity fans.
Djokovic said: “Now we have padel… it is growing and emerging. People are interested in it and say: ‘Yes, but tennis is tennis.’ “Tennis is the king or queen of all racquet sports, that’s true. But at the club level, tennis is under threat.
“As I said, if we don’t take action, globally or collectively, padel, pickleball [the] States, they’re going to convert all their tennis clubs to cricket and pickleball because it’s more economical.
“You have a tennis court. You can build three cricket pitches on a tennis court. You do simple math. It’s more economically viable for club owners to own these pitches.
It costs £80 an hour to rent a cricket pitch in London, and more are being built across the country.
In April, plans were announced to build a £2.5 million complex near the Trafford Center in Greater Manchester, billed as “the largest cricket facility in the North” and consisting of 11 pitches, a clubhouse and a gym.
Mole Valley District Council in Surrey approved the construction of six courtrooms in Leatherhead in May this year, which will be used at a national and international level, the BBC reports.
Djokovic said the future of grassroots tennis was increasingly under threat in countries such as his native Serbia, which do not have “strong federations… or history or big budgets”.
