Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz opened up after Jannik Sinner tested positive for a banned substance and escaped a potential ban.
The Australian Open winner tested positive for the steroid clostebol after his physio unknowingly contaminated Sinner with the substance during a treatment.
Last week, a tribunal cleared the Italian of any wrongdoing after accepting his explanation that the doping incident was not intentional and the ruling was accepted by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA).
The decision was not welcomed by the tennis fraternity as some believed that the Italian should have been banned and now Djokovic has also added his voice to the debate.
“There is a lot of issues in the system,” said Djokovic, as he spoke at his pre-US Open press conference.
“We see a lack of standardised and clear protocols. I can understand the sentiments of a lot of players that are questioning whether they are treated the same. Hopefully the governing bodies of our sport will be able to learn from this case and have a better approach for the future.
"Collectively there has to be a change, and I think that’s obvious.
“Many players – without naming any of them [as] I’m sure you know already who – have had similar or pretty much the same cases, where they haven’t had the same outcome.
“Now the question is whether it is a case of the funds, whether a player can afford to pay a significant amount of money for a law firm that would then more efficiently represent his or her case. I don’t know. Is that the case or not? That’s something really I feel like we have to collectively investigate more.”
On the other hand, Wimbledon winner Carlos Alcaraz also reacted to the Sinner case saying it was “complicated”.
“Well, it's a really difficult moment for him, that's for sure. It is complicated. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, it is complicated,” said Alcaraz.
“What I can say? I mean, in English it's going to be difficult for me to explain myself, but I try. Well, I believe in a clean sport. So I don't know too much about that. You know, I am pretty sure that there are a lot of things that we don't know, you know, inside the team or inside, you know, everything.
“But if they let Jannik keep playing, it’s for something, they said he's innocent. So that's all I know and that's all I can talk about.”
