The embattled Professional Tennis Players Association earlier this year strongly hinted it would bring a defamation claim against Andy Roddick’s podcast, Served, if it persisted in its reporting on the PTPA, or in fact ran with a story, which has not been published, at least yet.
The PTPA hired Clare Locke, a top defamation law firm known for its muscular approach to the media, to send the correspondence to the podcast. The January 7 letter even contended that PTPA co-founder Novak Djokovic left the organization because of the questions Served’s freelance reporter, Tim Rohan, was asking. Rohan was a long-time Sports Illustrated reporter. The questions revolved in part around allegations of double-dealing and that the FBI was investigating the PTPA and its financial backer, Winners Alliance.
“Mr. Rohan has caused my clients irreparable damage by spreading false and defamatory claims that (executive director) Mr. (Ahmad) Nassar, PTPA, and Winners Alliance are engaged in misconduct during his reporting,” Elizabeth Locke wrote in a letter to the podcast’s attorney. “These false claims directly caused Novak Djokovic’s abrupt and highly damaging departure from PTPA. Served’s continued refusal to provide a meaningful opportunity to comment on the factual allegations that will be included in any eventual story will cause even greater damage to my clients and is evidence of Served’s actual malice.”
The double-dealing focuses largely on Nassar because of his dual roles at the PTPA and Winners Alliance. Nassar stepped down as executive director of PTPA in March.
The letter is included as an exhibit to a filing last week from Wajid Syed Mir, the former PTPA general counsel, who is the defendant in a federal court case brought against him by the PTPA and Winners Alliance. Mir is close with a group of players who claim they are the real PTPA and are in turn suing Winners Alliance, Nassar, and other players in Washington, D.C., Superior Court.
The group suing in D.C. claims Winners Alliance is taking advantage of the PTPA, and Syed was preparing to investigate the alleged conflicts of interest and double-dealing by Nassar and PTPA co-founder Vasek Pospisil when he was fired. The PTPA entity that is essentially counter-suing but in federal court argues Mir was dismissed for cause and there is no evidence of conflicts of interest. This faction remains in control of the organization.
The PTPA was founded in 2019 by Djokovic and Pospisil as a counterweight to the WTA and ATP Tours, which are structured so players and management each have 50 percent of the organization. There are perennial issues like scheduling, prize money, sponsorships and health care that never get solved in the sport. That is in part due to power in tennis being dispersed among the four Grand Slams, the tours, and agents, which created a toxic brew of overlapping fiefdoms and conflicts.
The PTPA never could establish itself as a legitimate partner with the other organizations, and in March 2025 filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against the governing bodies in tennis. Djokovic, who declined to be a named plaintiff in the antitrust action, withdrew from the organization in early January, a fully unexpected move.
Mir, in his declaration filed with the Illinois federal court, cited correspondence between PTPA officials saying they had known nothing about it.
Djokovic, in a statement at the time about his move, wrote, “After careful consideration, I have decided to step away completely from the Professional Tennis Players Association. This decision comes after ongoing concerns regarding transparency, governance, and the way my voice and image have been represented.”
Three days after this statement, Clare Locke sent the letter to Served. In that letter, Locke references a January 2 letter to the podcast demanding a litigation hold. A litigation hold is essentially a warning from a law firm to a prospective defendant not to erase any material on the contested subject.
“Any claim or suggestion that Winners Alliance and PTPA have a conflict of interest or are being targeted by the FBI or DOJ in any investigation is false and defamatory, “ she wrote in the letter to Served.
A representative for Served said he could not comment because the podcast is continuing its reporting on the subject. The podcast has not yet run a full story on the PTPA, though Roddick, after the Djokovic withdrawal, said, “that this does not feel like a story that will go away quickly” and that “you know it’s a big story when you have 25 friends, of which eight actually care about tennis, texting you.” Locke described those comments as the progeny of the alleged “false claims and implications spread by Served’s reporting to date.”
The Served letter is not the only one sent by the defamation law firm because of troubles at the PTPA. Clare Locke sent one to Mir in June accusing him of defaming PTPA, Winners Alliance, and Nassar. And Served came up again.
“Your false claims were not confined to private conversations,” Locke wrote to Mir on June 10 (this letter was filed in the D.C. case). “You communicated with the media outlet Served and its reporters without the knowledge or approval of the Executive Committee or Executive Director, including falsely representing or implying to Served that our firm no longer represents the PTPA. Your false claims were also amplified through anonymous X accounts, @KennyPowersA and @ArchaicMind3000. We are investigating whether you directed these statements or whether they were foreseeable republications of your false claim.”
Locke made some demands of Served in her January 7 letter. She called for equal treatment in its coverage, and before going with a story, to identify any negative element and provide the documents relied on. She continues that if Served relied on unnamed sources, those must also be disclosed. And she demands that Served, if it has unnamed sources, communicate the litigation hold to them.
“Ignoring the concerns we have identified and failing to offer a meaningful opportunity to comment will be evidence that Served is acting in accordance with a preconceived narrative and with reckless disregard for the truth.”
