{"id":141311,"date":"2020-04-23T02:53:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T00:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2020\/04\/23\/roger-federer-opens-debate-with-surprise-atp-wta-merger-plan\/"},"modified":"2020-04-23T02:53:27","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T00:53:27","slug":"roger-federer-opens-debate-with-surprise-atp-wta-merger-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=141311","title":{"rendered":"Roger Federer opens debate with surprise ATP-WTA merger plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Now is the time for men\u2019s and women\u2019s tennis to be united\u2019Federer boosts campaign for unity but obstacles remainRoger Federer\u2019s surprise suggestion that the governing bodies who have separately run men\u2019s and women\u2019s tennis for decades should merge to steer the game through the global health crisis and beyond has set alight discussion on social media.Although combining the different ranking systems, schedules and rules of the ATP and the WTA is superficially appealing, considerable political obstacles remain. The existing hierarchies will take some persuading to vote themselves out of high office, for a start, whatever the passing observations of a universally admired legend of the game who has won 20 majors and whose opinion carries probably more weight than that of any other player. Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2020\/apr\/22\/roger-federers-surprise-atp-wta-merger-plan-receives-warm-welcome\" target=\"_blank\">Roger Federer opens debate with surprise ATP-WTA merger plan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Now is the time for men\u2019s and women\u2019s tennis to be united\u2019Federer boosts campaign for unity but obstacles remainRoger Federer\u2019s surprise suggestion that the governing bodies who have separately run men\u2019s and women\u2019s tennis for decades should merge to steer the game through the global health crisis and beyond has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}