Taylor Fritz has slammed the packed tennis schedule after Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic all pulled out of the upcoming Masters 1000 event in Canada. The Canadian Open has been extended to last 12 days instead of seven this year, and it begins just two weeks after Wimbledon finished. With such a quick turnaround, some top players have already opted to skip the tournament altogether.
World No. 4 Fritz had to bounce back even faster following his Wimbledon semi-final loss, as he’s competing in Washington this week. And the American claimed it was “insane” that tennis bosses continued to add tournaments to the calendar instead of giving the players more rest time.
With Sinner, Alcaraz, Djokovic, Jack Draper, and Jordan Thompson pulling out of the Canadian Open, Fritz was asked whether the packed tennis schedule had become a talking point amongst the locker room.
From this year, seven of the nine Masters 1000 events on the ATP Tour have been extended to 96-player draws, and they are now almost two weeks long, compared to the old one-week format still used in Monte Carlo and Paris.
The calendar has been adjusted to make room for these longer events but players are already feeling the effects of the schedule change, and Fritz has questioned why there can’t be further changes to shorten the season altogether.
“I mean, probably pretty much all the players for a long time have been asking for the season to be shorter, but all we are doing is just lengthening it, adding more stuff, we’re adding more, like, longer tournaments,” the 10-time title winner said.
“The Hopman Cup was after Wimbledon. I didn’t even know this was going on. They had an event with like Felix [Auger-Aliassime] and [Flavio] Cobolli playing a tournament right after Wimbledon, and one of them is coming and playing here. It’s insane. We are just adding stuff to the calendar over and over again.”
The Masters 1000s in Canada and Cincinnati will be staged across three weeks, with the Canadian Open final taking place on Thursday, August 7, the day Cincinnati begins. But the world No. 4 wants to see more wiggle room.
Fritz continued: “I think they shortened parts to obviously give themselves an extra week to do this, to make it the three weeks between the two tournaments.
“You know, I think it’s funny how we find ways to shorten the schedule to make room for other tournaments, but we can’t find room to shorten the schedule just for there to be nothing.
“I’d love to see it go back to just two weeks and maybe we can have an extra, can shorten the season a week, I don’t know. But it’s a lot of tennis. It’s a lot of tennis upcoming.”
However, while some players aren’t a fan of the two-week Masters 1000 events, Fritz admitted he liked the ability to have a day off in between matches, as players do at the four Majors.
“To be honest, I am complaining about the length of the two-week tournaments, but at the same time, I don’t dislike playing a match and having a day off and playing a match,” he added.
“It’s weird. It’s just kind of like kind of, like, mindset and feeling I’m in. Some weeks I might prefer just to go all at once, and some weeks I might prefer to have a day off after my matches.”
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