Doubles Revolt: Over 150 Players Sign Open Letter Against ATP’s Proposed 2028 Cuts

Andre Goransson and Sem Verbeek won the 2024 Infosys Hall of Fame Open doubles title. Credit: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect | Source: Lastwordonsports.com - Steen KirbyThe ATP’s 2028 blueprint promises more money for everybody. After reading the fine print, the ATP’s doubles players are pushing against the proposed changes.On October 26, an open letter signed by 137 active players, 33 former players and 20 national federations called on the ATP to reconsider its proposed changes to doubles from 2028. The Bryan brothers signed it. When Bob and Mike Bryan, the most successful team the men’s game has ever produced, put their names on a protest letter, the tennis world starts paying attention.As Sports Illustrated reported, the proposals would halve the doubles draws at Masters 1000 tournaments and move millions in prize money from doubles to singles. The doubles players aren’t against reform. They’re against being the ones who pay for it.What Is the ATP Tour Proposing for 2028?On October 15, ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi laid out his case for the biggest restructuring of the men’s tour in a generation. The 2028 Blueprint takes annual player compensation to around $350 million, more than doubles the Bonus Pool from $21.5 million to $50 million, reorganizes the calendar into dedicated weeks by tier, and reweights the rankings toward the biggest events. A 10th Masters 1000, in Saudi Arabia, is part of the package.Smaller Draws and Less Prize Money for the ATP Doubles TourUnder the proposals being discussed, Masters 1000 doubles draws fall from 32 teams to 16. At ATP 500s and 250s, the reported plan is draws of eight teams. Doubles’ share of tournament prize money would drop from 20 percent to 10 percent. None of this is approved yet — but it’s all on the table, and these cuts are drastic, for a side of the sport that already struggles for attention and TV airtime, but remains compelling to watch courtside.Gaudenzi’s letter never gave the draw sizes or the percentages. What it did say is where the money goes: anything taken out of doubles gets redirected into singles qualifying and early round prize money. According to the players, the total being moved is approximately $20 million.Put that in doubles terms. Win the Shanghai Masters doubles title, as Lucas Miedler and Neil Oberleitner did last month, and your team splits $468,200. Win Chengdu, one of the richest 250s on the calendar, and it’s $64,020. Halve the draws and halve the share, and the math below the top 30 teams stops working entirely. These are not players with shoe deals. These are players splitting paychecks with a partner, paying a coach out of it, and flying to the next one. In many cases these are players who found a renewed opportunity as professionals, when the singles game no longer paid.The ATP is promising a richer tour. The doubles players are being asked to accept fewer places on it.Sem Verbeek Leads the OppositionThe October letter is the loudest moment in a fight that has been running since Wimbledon, when the ATP first started briefing players on the doubles review and the players answered with a statement of their own: do the math on what this means for anyone outside the top 30, they wrote, and it will be impossible to make a living.The face of the campaign is Sem Verbeek. The Dutchman won the Wimbledon mixed doubles title in 2025, he’s ranked around 60 in the world, and he posted the letter himself. His line to BBC Sport was the bluntest anyone has used: the proposals would “destroy careers, livelihoods and dreams.”The letter’s own argument is simple enough. “The ATP exists to serve all professional players,” it reads. “Tennis is more than a business. It is a worldwide legacy built on joy, health and sportsmanship. A legacy like that should open doors, not close them.”Doubles careers are built slowly. Specialists grind through Challengers for years before a main-tour draw becomes a normal week. Cut the draws and you don’t just take matches away from the players in them now — you take away the route in for the next generation.Read More: From Looking for Free Housing to Wimbledon Champion: Sem Verbeek’s Fairy Tale JourneyThe ATP’s response has been careful. Doubles will remain a core part of the tour, the review is about building a sustainable long-term model, and talks with player representatives are ongoing. All of that may be true. But sustainability looks different depending on where you stand. A singles player losing in qualifying would love the extra prize money doubles is being asked to give up. A doubles specialist watching his draw get cut in half has heard the word “sustainable” used about his job disappearing, a financial reality the ATP may not be able to balance.Turin ATP Finals Meetings Could Decide the Future of DoublesNone of this is decided. The package goes to the ATP’s year-end meetings in Turin, held alongside the ATP Finals from November 15 to 22, and the vote is where this gets interesting.The board has nine members: Gaudenzi, four tournament representatives and four player representatives. The player bloc holds four of nine votes, which means it can neither pass nor block anything by itself. Somebody has to move — Gaudenzi, or a tournament director, or the whole doubles item gets deferred while the rest of the blueprint goes through, the fight is on ahead of this vote.A Wider Fight Over Player PowerAug 3, 2026; Montreal, QC], Canada; ATP Tour logo on a net during first round play at IGA Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Eric Bolte-Imagn ImagesThe timing does the ATP no favors. The PTPA’s antitrust lawsuit against the tour survived every motion to dismiss in September and is in discovery. That case is separate from the doubles fight, but the subject underneath both is the same: how much say players actually have over the decisions that shape their careers. Voting to halve the doubles economy in the middle of that lawsuit is a choice.For now, the players have done what they can do. More than 150 current and former professionals, 20 federations and the greatest team in the history of the discipline have said, on the record, that this is wrong. Whether that changes a single vote in Turin is something we’ll know sooner rather than later.The Last WordThe ATP is right that the tour needs more money in players’ pockets and a calendar that makes sense, some of these reforms are truly monumental to keep men’s tennis sustainable, but there is a difference between growing the sport and deciding which players still get to be part of it. The doubles players aren’t asking the tour to stop changing. They’re asking why progress has to mean eight-team draws, fewer jobs and their share of the money walking across the hall to singles. If doubles is really a core part of the tour, the ATP has a strange way of showing it — and in Turin, it has one week to show something different.Main Photo Credit: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect