The idea of appearance money is ********. Screw the top ranked players. If they dont want to attend, who cares. Their ranking wont be as high as a result. Instead of giving that appearance money away to top ranked players, why not use it to up the prize money for everyone else. I think the problem with pro tennis is that only really 100 people have the chance at a decent life through the tour. In the MLB, NBA, or NFL hundreds of people are paid 6 figure salaries. In tennis however, this only occurs with the players ranked inside the top 100 or higher. The ATP needs to force the tournament directors to distribute the money more evenly so that 1st round losers get more money. This would put money in the pockets of the up and comers trying to make it. If you ever watch the movie journeyman, you can see that being ranked at about 100 and losing the first couple rounds of most of your tournaments doesnt pay off because the traveling expenses are so high that you end up with pocket change at the end of the year. The ATP needs to do something such as 1) making deals with airlines to try and get discounted rates for all of the players (or even pay for the players airfare), 2) increase advertising for torunaments (especially in the U.S), 3) and try to make the sport overall more popular by increasing the amount of tennis that is televised by supporting networks such as the Tennis Channel and helping them to get permission for televising the tournaments. Overall, the money is too clumped at the top and the attendance of tournaments is low due to lack of advertising and lack of cable time. The Tennis Channel wont cut it as a real channel because it is only provided through digital cable. It needs to become a cable channel so that more people who only have basic cable can see it. I dont know, these are just my opinions.
