The vagueness is deliberate and he explained it. \u201cTennis can be so unpredictable, because you don\u2019t know how many matches you\u2019re going to win, if the tournaments are going to last one match or seven. It\u2019s going to be depends on how I feel physically, how I feel mentally, if I need long breaks at the beginning of the year, in the middle, or at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday the same policy came with numbers attached but no reason beyond the schedule itself. \u201cIn the future, I\u2019m going to take some breaks, some long breaks,\u201d he said after beating Portugal\u2019s Jaime Faria 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2 in the second round.<\/p>\n
If they don\u2019t do anything about it, we are going to see even more in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not four months, but one month, two months, missing some tournaments, because it\u2019s impossible to play them all.\u201d He put the mandatory commitments at 40 weeks of tennis for anyone playing everything the ATP requires, and pointed at the players who were not in New York at all: Jannik Sinner, Jack Draper, Holger Rune and Joao Fonseca among them. \u201cIf they don\u2019t do anything about it, we are going to see even more in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is speaking from the inside of the problem. The wrist injury he sustained in April cost him four and a half months and he returned to defend a title rather than to build towards one. The consequences show up in small places. Golf, which he plays, is off the calendar for the season. His days between matches at this tournament have gone to recovery rather than to anything else. \u201cThose days, if I\u2019m practicing or not, I\u2019m trying to be chill and focus on the next round,\u201d he said. \u201cSo golf in this year isn\u2019t an option.\u201d<\/p>\n
The link he made on Sunday between skipping tournaments and lasting a decade or more is one the sport has already watched play out. Speaking on Sky Sports, Jamie Murray argued that the younger players have simply read the evidence. \u201cThese younger guys have seen how Roger and Rafael have elongated their careers, how they finished their careers as well. If they want to play until they\u2019re 34, 35, 36, they will probably have to skip tournaments and that\u2019s something the Tour needs to consider.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcaraz plays American No. 8 seed Ben Shelton in the quarterfinals, three wins from a third consecutive US Open title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The vagueness is deliberate and he explained it. \u201cTennis can be so unpredictable, because you don\u2019t know how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-886528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}