ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi has weighed in on the huge, ongoing row over the demanding tennis schedule. Carlos Alcaraz has been among those to voice his concerns. He previously joked “they are going to kill us” when discussing the packed calendar.
The boss of the men’s tennis tour has conceded that it is a massive problem but his hands seem to be tied by commitments to the tournaments. The tennis schedule is becoming more and more demanding for players with mandatory tournaments being extended. The Masters 1000s in Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Rome and Shanghai are now played over two weeks instead of one.
And next year, the Canadian Open and Cincinnati Open will also be expanded to match them. It will leave just two one-week Masters events on the calendar - Monte Carlo and Paris. Plenty of players have slammed the demanding nature of the tennis tour, including Alcaraz.
“I'm the kind of player who think there is a lot of tournaments during the year,” he said in September. “Mandatory tournaments, and probably during the next few years gonna be even more tournaments, more mandatory tournaments. So, I mean, probably they are going to kill us in some way.
” He’s not the only one who feels this way - Stefanos Tsitsipas recently took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to slam the two-week Masters format, branding it a “backwards move” . And Jack Draper previously said the calendar was “mental”. ATP chairman Gaudenzi has now addressed the concerns, admitting th.