Tennis has been in much news of late over dwindling interest in the sport across the United States. Major television networks are shunning away from the sport due to declining viewership. Moreover, Netflix also put an end to the further extension of Break Point, a documentary on tennis. Recently, the legendary coach of Coco Gauff, Brad Gilbert highlighted a major reason why the interest in the sport is declining.

On the other hand, golf is gaining massive popularity in America. Gilbert compared tennis to golf as he drew comparisons to the two age-old sports. Here’s what he had to say about the falling interest in the racket sport.

Coco Gauff’s coach makes a concerning revelation

Earlier today, Gilbert sat down for an interview with CNBC. During that conversation, he talked about various happenings around the tennis world. One such subject was declining interest in the sport. Gilbert mentioned, “Biggest difference between golf and tennis show is that every weekend, when there’s a major golf tournament, especially the PGA Tour, it’s on Network Television. Right now, this tournament has exclusives in the States only on Tennis Channel which doesn’t have a massive cable subscription.”

Further, he went on to add, “They don’t pay any TV rights to be on right now. So that’s something in the near future that needs to happen. Tennis needs to be at big terms, especially the Indian Wells and Miami, need to be on major networks to take tennis to the next level.”

This is not the only concern about the sport that Gilbert has highlighted in recent times. At the Australian Open earlier this year, he pointed out a major rule change.

Gilbert slams injury timeout evaluation

As players struggled with extreme conditions at the Australian Open earlier this year, many players opted for injury timeouts. However, evaluation by the umpires to grant this time out was time-consuming. Gilbert highlighted this fact and had a wish for a rule change.

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He said, “The injury TO evaluation takes way too long, sometimes even longer than the actual injury TO. It used to be back in the day, no evaluation, just 3 mins – they should go back to that rule.”

He had a disappointing tournament with Gauff as she lost in the semifinal of the Australian Open. Nonetheless, she has come back strongly and will face Maria Sakkari in the semifinal of the Indian Wells.