THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — Standing on Centre Court at Wimbledon after winning a second men’s doubles title in three years, British tennis player Henry Patten had something to tell the world.
“The ATP submitted proposals to maybe cut some of the doubles,” Patten, 30, said after he and partner Harri Heliövaara had defeated Croatia’s Mate Pavić and El Salvador’s Marcelo Arévalo.
He got to add, “I am a strong believer that we are here to grow the game. I think this is a fantastic example…” before the crowd interrupted and cheered.
“I think this is a fantastic example of the joy doubles can bring. I believe that we should be growing opportunities in tennis for kids, whether they’re doubles players, singles players, from the UK, from Finland, from Croatia, from El Salvador. We should be growing the sport rather than taking opportunities away,” Patten said.
Patten’s words followed a fortnight of turmoil on the men’s doubles tour. At the start of Wimbledon, doubles players met with the ATP Player Council to discuss proposals first discussed in May. They would halve the size of doubles draws at tour events and redistribute prize money from doubles to singles. At most ATP Tour events, the total prize pool is 80 percent singles, 20 percent doubles; under the new proposals, which are slated for 2028, that would become 90 percent singles, 10 percent doubles.
Draws would also shrink from 32 pairs at ATP Masters 1000 events (the rung below the Grand Slams) to 16, and from 16 to eight at ATP 500 and 250 events, the other two categories of tournament on the main tour outside the Grand Slams.
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The consequences, top doubles players said in a joint statement at the end of the first week of Wimbledon, would include making doubles an unviable career for pairs outside the top 30 — as well as shrinking job opportunities in the wider tennis ecosystem, for coaches, trainers, fitness professionals and other members of players’ teams who would eventually no longer have a player to work with. The proposals would not impact Grand Slam doubles events.
“Doubles isn’t a carnival sideshow,” the players said.
“It is one of the most successful parts of tennis — integral to the amateur game — with the potential to do so much more.
“Yet the impact of the ATP’s proposals will be to diminish the sporting excellence that is professional doubles and turn off the pipeline of pro doubles players and the entire infrastructure that supports them.
“Doubles is not an afterthought we fell into. It has always been part of this sport’s identity, not a discount version of it.”
In a statement, the ATP Tour said: “We are assessing the doubles product, draw sizes and player compensation distribution with the aim of creating a more sustainable long-term model while maintaining doubles’ important role on the Tour.
“The review is also assessing whether changes to the doubles model could enable increased investment in early-round singles prize money, helping more players at the highest level to better meet the costs of competing on Tour and build sustainable professional careers.
“Any potential changes will be developed through close consultation with players, tournaments and the ATP Board, with any decisions made in the best long-term interests of the sport and its consumers.”
During a roundtable earlier in the tournament, Patten, who with Heliövaara is joint world No. 1, described the proposals as “shocking.”
“In terms of my career, maybe I would play to 2028, a couple of years past it, if things remained the same, so it won’t really affect me that much,” he said.
“But what it will affect is the number of people that are able to make a living out of tennis. It will reduce that number, and redistribute the funds to people who are already doing well in tennis. So I find that a shocking decision to make tennis a more elitist sport.
“I don’t know what their endgame is. The level of doubles will go down.”
Harri Heliövaara (left) and Henry Patten won the season-ending ATP Tour Finals in 2025. (Valerio Pennicino / Getty Images)
In 2024, the ATP introduced changes to doubles events designed to encourage more singles vs. doubles matchups, allowing more pairs of singles players to use their singles rankings to enter and making the entry deadline later than it had been previously. At the tour’s flagship ATP Masters 1000 events, all but two of which now last 12 days, rather than seven, doubles matches on outside courts are key to offering fans who buy grounds passes value in the second week, because they would otherwise have little or no tennis to watch.
Tickets are rarely bought for doubles specifically, and the compelling singles vs. doubles matchups — or just singles stars playing doubles on top of singles — do not happen with any frequency. But grounds passes are also rarely bought for any kind of tennis specifically — the experience of watching tennis, whatever kind it may be, is the point.
Singles players routinely withdraw from exciting doubles pairings if one or both of them do well in their main discipline, creating large holes in doubles draws. The increasingly physical nature of singles competition only adds to this, and stops leading singles players from prioritizing, or even considering doubles as a viable part of their careers. High-profile matchups, like Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal being given a lesson in court geometry by Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek at the 2024 Paris Olympics, do capture the imagination, but they are vanishingly rare even at the biggest events and essentially impossible to manufacture on the ATP Tour.
For the doubles players who issued a statement against the proposals, there is an additional problem. The statement referenced “lackluster marketing of doubles, failure to exploit broadcast and other commercial partnerships, and poor event staging and promotion.”
In the roundtable at Wimbledon, Patten described the ATP’s marketing as “shambolic.” Tennis TV, the ATP-Media operated streaming platform, did not post about the men’s doubles final at Wimbledon on its Instagram grid. The official ATP Tour Instagram account made three posts about Patten and Heliövaara’s win.
At Wimbledon, tennis fans who watched doubles said that men’s doubles is crucial to the ecosystem, and also more relatable to recreational tennis players and fans, with doubles a common discipline at clubs.
“When you look at club level, most people play doubles,” Lenny Cornwall said during an interview. “I want to be able to see good doubles so I can learn.” Other fans disagreed, describing doubles as “not functional.”
While Wimbledon — and the other three majors — act as showcases for doubles, this is largely due to the huge amounts of spillover attendance generated by the size of the tournaments that even the biggest ATP events, cannot match.
The next ATP Masters 1000 event is the Canadian Open, which starts August 2 in Montreal. In last year’s doubles event, rising singles stars Ben Shelton and Arthur Fils paired up. They defeated top doubles players Hugo Nys and Edouard Roger-Vasselin, before withdrawing from their quarterfinal against Kevin Krawietz and Tim Pütz because Shelton had reached the quarterfinals in singles. He ultimately won the tournament, and over $1.1 million dollars. Doubles champions Julian Cash and Lloyd Glasspool split just over $457,000.
For Patten and other doubles players, the proposals remain proposals. He is optimistic meetings with the ATP will bring discussion about how to move doubles forward. “It hasn’t happened yet,” he said. “We’re trying.”
