Coinciding with the threat of a strike expressed in recent days by some footballers, who claim that the spectacle is suffering as injuries punish the players and that, if necessary, they would be willing to stop, Carlos Alcaraz also reflected on the toughness of the tennis calendar. The 21-year-old from Murcia referred during his participation last weekend in the Laver Cup to the obligation to play certain tournaments – those imposed by the ATP circuit, except for exemptions due to injury or very specific career – and expressed his disagreement, understanding that the saturation of commitments diminishes the quality of their tennis and harms the motivation of professionals. He therefore stressed an old problem that seriously jeopardizes the possibility of developing a long career and that has been denounced by numerous tennis figures.
“Sometimes I don’t feel motivated. As I have said many times, the schedule is very tight and there are many tournaments, so I don’t have any days off or not as many as I would like. Sometimes I would like to take some days for myself, but I can’t; I have to train and travel, and then there is the jet lag“So sometimes I don’t feel like going to tournaments, I’m not going to lie,” the Murcia native said in Berlin, where he led the European triumph in the team competition organised annually by the legendary Roger Federer since 2017. “I’ve felt this a few times, because I would like to stay at home with my family or my friends, and I have to find the motivation just to go and play the right tennis, or put on the right face in training and matches,” he added.
Alcaraz, who entered the elite in 2021 – he got into it a year earlier, but the coronavirus interrupted his takeoff – says that the tight schedule prevents him from “finding that rhythm or that feeling” on the court, and that it is very difficult for him to balance his personal and professional life. “Each player has his own feeling. Some want to play more, even; many believe that this is a good schedule; and others say that it is too tight and that there are too many tournaments during the year. I am one of the latter, one of those who think that there are too many mandatory tournaments and that, probably, during the next few years there will be even more. So, in a way, they are going to kill us…”, the world number three added.
Alcaraz, the latest great talent in her sport, reached the top of the circuit in 2022 and has so far won four majors. However, she believes that she acts like an automaton and that at one time or another, her will can be broken by the erosion derived from the physical and psychological burden that has recently pushed her out of the spotlight or has ended up consuming quite a few professionals. Without going any further, the world number one, Iga Swiatek, has repeated on several occasions that the price of playing so often is too high and that her spirits have inevitably been affected. “Our sport is going in the wrong direction. We don’t have time to think or improve. We go from one tournament to another… The season is too long and this must change,” she said in August.
More and longer quotes
The 23-year-old Polish player recalled that the calendar starts at the end of December and that from now on, success will not come so much from quality as from the success in managing the roadmap of each tennis player. In her case, she started the season on the 29th and since then she has played 61 matches, which have led her to five titles and the Olympic bronze. However, she has preferred to slow down a couple of times to try to reduce the wear and tear. Swiatek, like Alcaraz, points to the imposition of the regulations to play a certain number of mandatory tournaments – the Mandatorywhich have been growing in recent years—and also the increase in length; in many cases, from one to two weeks; that is, the same as a Grand Slam. All of this, the Spaniard stresses, is beginning to weigh on him too much.
“There are a lot of injuries due to injuries caused by balls, the schedule and many other things. At some point, many good players are going to miss tournaments because of that, because they have to think about their bodies and take care of their private lives. They have families, many other things in life apart from tennis. All this is too much,” says the young man from El Palmar, who has played 52 official matches this season, including the last four this weekend in Berlin. He has distributed them in 12 tournaments, to which are added both his first Olympic experience and the recent Davis Cup commitments, which will put an end to the year on November 24. By then, he may have stepped onto the court 76 times, as long as the results are on his side and in the best of cases.
In 2021, the new spearhead of Spanish tennis played 49 matches; the following year, the figure increased to 66; it rose to 77 in 2023, despite the interference of injuries; and he will close the current year with a similar record, to which a significant extra must be added. Before traveling to Australia, he participated in an exhibition with Novak Djokovic in Saudi Arabia and in March he met with Rafael Nadal in Las Vegas, and soon he will parade through Riyadh again – in a millionaire conclave in which a priori He will once again meet Nadal and Djokovic, among other stars—and also in the United States, where he will face Ben Shelton at Madison Square Garden in New York (December 4) and Frances Tiafoe in Charlotte (on the 6th). That means more mileage, more hours of flight and more fatigue.
In its quest to expand and generate business, tennis continues to tighten the rope and squeeze the goose that lays the golden eggs. The total volume of tournaments is growing – 68 this year in the ATP and 58 in the WTA – and the number of mandatory events that the best must play – eight of the nine Masters 1000 and at least four ATP 500, in one case, and the ten WTA 1000 and six WTA 500, in another – and the calendar hardly offers any respite, beyond the break between November and December, which, in reality, is rather fictitious because the players must almost immediately begin the preparatory phase; a pre-season that is becoming less and less so. Today, the transition is minimal and everything is happening on the fly, overlapping. All parties want more, and the main actors and actresses reluctantly accept the toll, not without protest.
Paradox and aggressiveness
“I finished tired, with a lot of mental and physical wear and tear, because I also have many physical problems. The discipline that you have to have to stay in this sport is very hard, almost unsustainable,” Garbiñe Muguruza admitted to this newspaper in April, when the Spaniard announced her retirement at the age of 30. Alexander Zverev is three years younger, and over the weekend he also gave his opinion on a congestion that, far from being resolved, continues to worsen.
“No sport has such a long season, so unnecessarily long. There is no time to rest and prepare the body, so we need to do something about it,” says the German; “Boycott? We cannot do that, we do not decide or control this; if we do not play, we are fined. If you want to be number one (he is number two) and win Grand Slams, you have to play. What should we do? The ATP does not care about our opinion. It is a question of money. Tournaments cost a certain amount, and you cannot just get rid of them; the ATP has to find money to give back to those tournaments that bought the license, and that is millions and millions and millions of dollars. It does not work like that. They have the license and the rights, and you have to pay them. It is not as simple as it seems.”
In recent years, the addition of events and the extension of existing ones has considerably expanded the calendar. The United Cup – a sort of World Cup held at the beginning of the year and intended to compete with the Davis Cup – and the Laver Cup – which distributes money among participants, but not points – have been shoehorned in to the more or less traditional ones of greater or lesser magnitude, in the men’s case, and the proliferation of tournaments on Asian territory in the women’s case. The Arab factor has also burst into both and exhibitions are becoming increasingly popular, attracting a large sum of millions; Nadal toured South America a couple of years ago – Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Colombia – and also dropped by Abu Dhabi, and last year Alcaraz starred in a bolus before 20,000 people at La Monumental in DF.
In an analysis carried out by Reliefthe data shows that today’s top tennis players (men and women) play almost ten fewer matches than at the beginning of this century. Without going any further, Nadal played 93 in 2008 and surpassed the barrier of 80 on six occasions, while Federer reached 97 in 2006 and Djokovic the same figure in 2009. However, beyond the tangential, there are now two factors that intervene decisively and that explain this reduction: the average duration of the duels has been shooting up – 25% more in the major tournaments compared to the beginning of this century, according to The Athletic— and, above all, the current aggressiveness. Tennis is today an even more physically abrasive sport. It is played with more power and at much higher speed. So, paradoxically, the Herculean bodies of today are breaking down more and more.
