It is never difficult, wrote the great English humourist PG Wodehouse, to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. Andy Murray is doing his bit to prove that observation right. Never the cheeriest soul on tour, the sulky Scottish tennis player is threatening to lead a gang of rebellious professionals in strike action in protest at the punishing schedule.
To be fair to Murray and his weary fellow travellers, they have been treated poorly. The US Open’s decision to have a Super Saturday, with the men’s semifinals played on the same day as the women’s final, will always lead to fixture congestion when the tournament is interrupted by rain, as it was — badly — this summer.
It was bad luck that because of the rain, some players needed to be on court for four consecutive days (sometimes risking injury because the puddles had not been properly cleared at the baseline), but to then require them to fly across the world the day after the final in order to compete in the Davis Cup seems terrible scheduling.
“It takes so long just to change things,” Murray said, explaining the strike threat. “Ever since I came on the Tour, we’ve been discussing trying to make a shorter calendar and it’s been six, seven years now to get one week less.”
The proximity of the French Open and Wimbledon and the plans to play the World Tour Finals in the week after the Paris Masters next year are also a cause for grievance. Murray is meeting a cabal of would-be strikers in Shanghai next month, although the fact that we are nearly at the end of the season may mean that this all fizzles out. A strike in May before the French Open that threatens to run into the next two Grand Slams would carry more force.
I do wonder, though, if the poor, weary players at the top of tennis really know how lucky they are. It is hard to feel much sympathy for those who are made for life by the age of 30, even if this protest is not about money. Previous generations of players had a far greater workload for much less prize-money and those who are successful these days can afford to take time off that others can’t.
Ask the tennis players at the lower end of the world rankings whether they want a reduction in tournaments and they will tell you that they would rather have more opportunities to make money and advance their rankings. Many of them also play doubles all season as well. If Murray and Co want more rest, they could always cut down on their corporate appearances...
Tennis has had strike action before. In 1973, 79 men’s players, including 13 of the 16 seeds, boycotted Wimbledon in protest at the suspension of Nikki Pilic by the Yugoslavian Lawn Tennis Association, who claimed he had refused to play in the Davis Cup.
The international federation supported the governing body, but the newly formed Association of Tennis Professionals backed Pilic and so the players withdrew en masse. With the likes of Ilie Nastase, Roger Taylor, Jan Kodes and non-ATP members such as Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg still in the field, it was not a total disaster for the tournament but the point had been made.
Industrial action seems to be in the air everywhere these days.
In Spain and Italy, footballers have been refusing to start their seasons, metaphorically casting aside their boots in the hope of ruining the running of the league in the same way that disgruntled French peasants threw their wooden shoes, called sabots, into the machinery that was taking their jobs in the Industrial Revolution, from which we derive the word sabotage.
Players in Spain’s top-two football divisions went on strike last month, postponing the start of the new season, in protest at the financial belt-tightening among smaller clubs that meant that some 200 players were still awaiting salary payments. Of course, players should not have to perform free and there is something laudable in the players at the big teams refusing to work to support their less well-paid comrades, but there is an irony in the giant clubs calling “everybody out” when they can afford to have a few weeks without ticket sales. The minnows, whom the strike action is meant to support, will find it even harder to pay their players without matches on which to make money.
At least this industrial action was easy to sympathise with and it has resulted in a new stipulation that players who go three months without pay will be entitled to seek employment at another club. This has been a positive protest with a positive result. The strike action in Italy is less reasonable.
Not only is the distribution of revenue in Serie A more equitable than in Spain, but their gripe is about taxation rather than lack of wages. The Italian Government has introduced a solidarity tax on high-wage earners to deal with the recession affecting the country.
Those who earn above 90,000 euros (about $130,000) a year must pay an extra 5 per cent, while those who earn above 150,000 euros must pay 10 per cent.
No one likes to pay more tax, but the demands of the players that their clubs stomach the increase in order to ensure that they get the same net salary is unreasonable and will not win support among their fan-base, most of whom have had their own finances challenged. We understand when sportsmen need more respect; we grow resentful when they say they need more money.
Industrial disputes in sport are nothing new. Back in 1885, Australia made 11 changes to their team for the second Ashes Test in Sydney after the entire side walked out in protest because England had wanted half the gate money.
American sport has had a series of strikes and lockouts, where the owners mothball their team and refuse to pay them if they fail to accept new demands. The World Series was cancelled in 1994 in a dispute over the salary cap, which cost the league about $1 billion, while the NBA strike in 1999, in which more than 400 games were cancelled, created ill will and apathy for the sport among fans, particularly with Michael Jordan retiring, that led to reduced crowds for several seasons.
The 1987 NFL strike also backfired. Players thought that the TV networks would panic and put pressure on the clubs if they all withdrew their labour after the second game of the season to ask for more pay. Instead, the club owners simply assembled replacement teams, with the backing of the networks, and gave them such names as the Los Angeles Shams, the San Francisco Phoney-Niners and the Chicago Spare Bears.
People just want to watch sport and they do not always care who is playing. Andy Murray, who may find himself replaced in tournaments by someone called Randy Curry if he wants to take too many weeks off, should be warned.
—The author is a sports writer with Times, London
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