With the offseason up and running, off-court activities take center stage. Vasek Pospisil and Novak Djokovic are busy setting up their newly formed players’ association, PTPA. But as the two players were denied entry into the ATP Player council due to a rule change, Pospisil has hit back at ATP for their decision.

Why were Vasek Pospisil and Novak Djokovic not able to enter the ATP Player Council?

Novak Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil were nominated by other players to rejoin the ATP Player council, but a new rule change deemed their admission in the council a conflict of interest. The rule change made it illegal for members of the council to be a part of any other association.

Pospisil wasn’t happy with the decision as other players nominated him and Djokovic, and he felt that the ATP was denying them the opportunity to represent the players in the council

“Well, exactly so that was the other thing is when ATP found out that we were on the list they created overnight, they created a new law a new bylaw in ATP to prevent us from actually being able to go and represent the players,” Pospisil said in an interview with Tennis.com.

Further, he hit a few more jabs at the ATP by giving examples of bigger cases of conflict of interest amongst the core members of the ATP.

“But it is ok you have IMG representatives on the board, there is such, it blows my mind that it is ok that there are all these other insane conflict of interests like in no other sport in the world, they gave a pass to that. It’s crazy, it just shows you how desperate they are to maintain.”

During the ATP Finals, Djokovic also detailed the reason why he and Pospisil could not join the council.

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“The rule by ATP board was voted on last night, which basically doesn’t allow any active player to be part of the council and any other organization in the tennis ecosystem,” Djokovic said.

The tussle between ATP and PTPA will intensify when PTPA is ready and lays out its intentions. Let’s see whether ATP and PTPA can coexist peacefully.

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