One of the stops on the road to Flushing Meadows is the Canadian Open, with the ATP<\/a> playing in Toronto and WTA<\/a> event being held in Montreal.<\/p>\n But there is some bad news for the men\u2019s tournament in Canada this year, with several of the top 10 pulling out before the Masters 1000 event gets underway. <\/p>\n Following the conclusion of the ongoing Citi Open in Washington, Masters 1000 titles will resume in Canada.<\/p>\n The men will compete in Canada, but the field will not include the Jannik Sinner<\/a>, Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>, Novak Djokovic<\/a> and Jack Draper<\/a>.<\/p>\n Four of the world\u2019s best will not be in Toronto<\/a> competing for the title, and Steve Johnson<\/a> is disappointed for tournament organisers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cKarl Hale who is the tournament director in Toronto is one of the nicest guys ever. He runs an incredible event,\u201d Johnson told the Nothing major podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cHe kind of gets screwed, it used to be every four years with the Olympics that guys would take that event off, but with these two week long events, if you are reeling a little bit from Wimbledon and from the clay \u2013 like Sinner, Alcaraz, Draper and Djokovic.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is four of the biggest names in tennis, especially on the men\u2019s side, who have pulled out. It\u2019s a horrible, horrible beat for that event.<\/p>\n In 2024 the ATP and WTA extended the length of the majority of the Masters 1000 tournaments on the circuit.<\/p>\n These events tended to last one week, but now they last between 10 to 12 days, meaning players will spend more time at these tournaments, especially those who go on a deep run. <\/p>\n As a result, Johnson thinks this is a reason why the likes of Sinner and Alcaraz<\/a>, who contested the Wimbledon final<\/a> just nine days ago, have opted to miss the Canadian Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy would you want to come to North America for an extra two and a half three weeks now, leading up to the US Open, when you have back to back two week events?,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just too long. They need to go back to the eight day events, because they started Sunday. It\u2019s too much and too long for the guys to be here. They have got to go back to the condensed schedule especially in the summer and I just feel bad for that tournament.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Wimbledon now in the rearview mirror all attention turns to the North American hard court season. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[753,64,63,11230,85,747],"class_list":["post-15242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-atp","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canadian-open","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jannik](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2224933756-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Daniel Kopatsch\/Getty ImagesSteve Johnson shares how he feels about the high-profile withdrawals from the Canadian Open<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2165587813-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Mert Alper Dervis\/Anadolu via Getty ImagesSteve Johnson calls for a change to Masters 1000 events after players pull out of Canadian Open<\/p>\n