World No3 Dominic Thiem has rejected Novak Djokovic’s bid for players to spread their wealth to the lower-ranked players on tour, with the Austrian claiming “none of them are going to starve”.
Djokovic has called on the world’s leading players to pool their resources to help poorer off members of the ATP Tour during tennis’ lockdown, which is set to continue until mid-July at the earliest.
But Thiem, a three-time Grand Slam finalist and runner-up at last year’s ATP Tour Finals in London, hit back at the proposal. He said: “No tennis player is fighting to survive, even those who are much lower-ranked. None of them are going to starve.
“I don’t really see why I should give such players money. I would rather give money to people or organisations that really need it.
“There are many, many players who don’t put the sport above everything else and don’t live in a professional manner. I’ve seen players on the ITF-Tour who don’t commit to the sport 100%. Many of them are quite unprofessional.
“None of us top players got anything handed to us, we all had to fight our way up. I don’t have the guarantee in any job that I will do well and earn lots of money.”
Djokovic wants to raise £3.6million to help lower-ranked players and has received backing for the scheme from both Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal.
The Serbian said: “Everyone realises the base of tennis. These guys ranked 250 onwards are the ones making the future of tennis.”
