Eye-opening player payouts at Garden Cup, says Racquet founder

Founder of the tennis magazine ‘Racquet’, Caitlin Thompson, has made an interesting claim about the hefty payout received by Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and America’s Ben Shelton to participate in the Garden Cup. Both were amongst a number of players participated in the off-season exhibition event which was organised at the Madison Square Garden.

Thompson recently appeared on the Rennae Stubbs Podcast and made an interesting claim about the amount of money received by some of the top-name players in the competition. According to her, world number three Alcaraz was guaranteed to receive between $1 and $2 million, whereas America’s young tennis star earned between $200,000 and $500,000. She also confirmed that she verified the information from a number of sources.

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"The rumour is that it is between $1 and $2 million, guaranteed, [for Alcaraz],” she said. “I have heard as much as $2 million. I heard Jess and Emma got $100,000 and Ben got anywhere between $200,000 to $500,000. I have heard from a couple of different sources."

The development is an interesting one as Alcaraz is one of the most high-profile players who were very vocal about tough tennis schedule. “Sometimes I didn’t feel motivated at all,” he was quoted in a Tennis 365 report back in September. “It is a difficult moment. As I said many times, you know, the calendar is so tight, a lot of tournaments, no days off or not as many days off as I want. Probably during the next few years gonna be even more tournaments, more mandatory tournaments. So, I mean, probably they are going to kill us in some way.”

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Recently, ATP chief Andrea Gaudenzi also questioned players like Alcaraz, who raised concerns about the tennis schedule but still play in off-season exhibition events. “Some players choose to do a lot of exhibitions off the tour,” he said while talking to French publication L'Equipe. “You don't see that in other sports.”