Dabrowski on challenges of playing doubles: "They make somewhere between 17-21% of what a singles player makes"

Gabriela Dabrowski is one of the leading doubles players and in a recent interview with WTA Insider, the Canadian spoke about the challenges that doubles players face and how she has overcome them personally to become financially stable.

"It's challenging because doubles players make, percentage-wise, somewhere between 17-21% of what a singles player makes. So to be financially stable, you have to win a lot. It's very tricky because if you have a couple of bad weeks, you're in the minus.

Obviously for me, the goal has always been to do as well as I can in every tournament that I play and I've been fortunate enough to have had a lot of good results. Now, where I am in my career, I am more financially stable and that's a great blessing."

On getting more people involved in Doubles

Also speaking from the point of view of a player who is involved with the Player Council, Dabrowski is very much trying to push doubles as a sport which is marketable and is working on methods to bring doubles to more fans.

"It's definitely not easy. I'm on the Player Council and we're working really hard to try to push more doubles initiatives forward because I think there is a market for doubles and a really big fan base, but we haven't been able to get the exposure that's been necessary.

We're working hard on trying to bring doubles to more people. I think it can be really fun and exciting and we can interact more one-on-one with fans. We can have maybe more clinics, more Q&A sessions. Literally anything. Any feedback we get from fans, we can try to implement it.

Then hopefully in a few years' time, if everything goes well, we can fight for more prize money because we feel that we've got more exposure. We've got more of a fan base, more popularity, and therefore we can ask for more.

But right now, as it stands, it's really tough because the tournaments are focusing on singles. So you have to kind of convince them that there is something in it for them. We just need to try a little bit right now and be a little pushy.

https://twitter.com/WTA_insider/status/1253730258768900097?s=20

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