WITH a comfortable 7-6 6-4 6-2 win against Milos Raonic on Wednesday night, world No. 1 Novak Djokovic guaranteed himself at least $650,000 in prizemoney at this year’s Australian Open.

For two hours work on Rod Laver Arena, Djokovic earnt $310,000 — the difference between reaching the quarters and the semis.

Compare that to Australian journeyman John Millman, who since turning pro in 2006 has earned $304,009.

It’s a startling example of the growing inequality in professional tennis that one player can earn more in one night than another has in almost 10 years on the circuit.

You can argue Millman is a journeyman who simply isn’t good enough. If he was a better player he’d earn more money.

But he’s currently ranked No. 151 in the world.

If he was the 151st best AFL player on the planet, he would have earnt more than $400,000 last season alone.

His equivalent in golf — another indiviudal sport — is Andrew Loupe, who finished in 151st position on golf’s PGA Tour last year and took home $563,120.

It’s even worse if you look at pro sport in the US.

Philadelphia’s Luc Richard Mbah a Moute is the 151st highest paid player in the NBA this season, earning almost $4.4 million.

It’s similar in the NFL, where Buffalo Bills running back CJ Spiller made almost $6 million as the 151st highest paid player this season.

It’s not as though there’s no money in tennis either.

Three tennis players — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic — finished in the top 20 of Forbes’ list of the world’s highest paid athletes last year.

That was more than any other sport outside of football.

It just comes down to how the money is distributed among the game’s top players.

The positive is the International Tennis Federation — which manages the junior and lower senior tiers of the game — has woken up to the issue after conducting a review of the pro circuit.

Some of its findings included:

* OF the combined 13,736 male and female professional players in the world in 2013, 6108 didn’t earn a cent of prizemoney.

* OF the $162 million of prizemoney paid in men’s competition, $97.5 million went to the top one per cent of players (the top 50).

* ON average it cost about $160,000 a year to compete on the pro circuit and only 1.8 per cent of men and 3.1 per cent of women earnt enough to cover.

* OF the $120 million paid in women’s, more than half went to the top 26.

IT’S now taking an average of almost five years for men’s players to reach the top 100 — where you can actually make a decent living — after earning their first ranking point.

A series of changes, including significantly increased prizemoney, will be submitted to the ITF Board next month.

Let’s hope they’re made before players like Millman are lost to the game.