The International Tennis Federation has at least 50 singles players on the list of athletes who must report their location for an hour each day.
Djokovic feels the system is a bit to much and unnecessary according to the website tennis.com.
- The whereabouts demands are a little bit too much and a bit unnecessary to write where you are every single day of the year," he said. "If you don't appear at the place where it is written down then you get a warning, then two warnings and then suspension. I think that is a bit too much, he says.
- The tennis season is very long. They know where we are and they can find us. When you're in the off-season you are going back and forth and changing cities and locations and it can be hard to track down and fill in the whereabouts sheet.
Whereabouts important for clean sport
The Whereabout program was introduced in 2003 and has been controversial since the start. But World Anti-Doping Agency has always protected it's existence.
According to the WADA website out-of-competition doping controls are the most powerful means of deterrence and detection of doping and are an important step in strengthening athlete and public confidence in doping-free sport. This because out-of-competition doping controls can be conducted without notice to athletes.
On their website WADA writes:
"Experience has shown that out-of-competition testing is crucial to the fight against doping, in particular because a number of prohibited substances and methods are detectable only for a limited period of time in an athlete’s body while maintaining a performance-enhancing effect. The only way to perform such testing is by knowing where athletes are, and the only way to make it efficient is to be able to test athletes at times at which cheaters may be most likely to use prohibited substances and methods."
Used by 50.000
The athletes must register their positions in ADAMS (Anti-Doping Administration & Management System). This can be done with smart phone applications or by sms. The information can be done by the athletes them selves, or by done by anyone of the athletes staff.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has published information on their website where they describe how athletes update their whereabout information: Whereabouts Overview