Follow us on Google Discover Kim Clijsters has given her verdict on a hotly debated topic among both tennis players and fans at the moment.
Many players including Iga Swiatek have criticised the current tennis schedule, calling out the WTA Tour again at the China Open.
Swiatek is not alone in her disapproval, but Carlos Alcaraz was criticised for being hypocritical following his recent complaints.
The tennis calendar has seemingly started to impact tournaments, with Andy Roddick calling out the schedule following withdrawals in Shanghai, but Kim Clijsters does not necessarily agree.
Photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty ImagesKim Clijsters responds to recent complaints about the tennis schedule
Recently, former world number one Karolina Pliskova called out players for complaining, something that four-time Grand Slam champion Clijsters was asked about on a podcast for Tennis Bolshoi.
While she did not explicitly say so, it appears that Clijsters somewhat agrees with Pliskova, suggesting that she heard a lot of complaints when she was on the WTA Players Council.
Clijsters claimed that the ranking point system would need to change for the tennis calendar to shorten, but she believes that the current schedule is needed for lower-ranked players.
“There have been and always will be complaints about the calendar,” said Clijsters. “There are players who are dissatisfied with everything. When I was on the board of the WTA Council in 2003 and 2004 for two years all I heard was calendar, calendar, and now it’s all the same.
“But in order to shorten the tennis season, the entire ranking system needs to be changed, the points system needs to be changed. That’s the only way to make it a shorter schedule, but many players don’t want the shorter season…This is a hopeless situation.
“The organisers and tournament directors do their job, giving job opportunities, and the prize money is going up. I think there’s a lot of things that are going in the right direction, and it is what it is, it comes with the job, yeah that’s kind of how I feel about it.
“You know you can’t please everybody, the tournaments need to exist, you have to have tournaments in November and December, because there’s a lot of players throughout the year who don’t get the opportunity to play a lot of matches.
“There’s more players that lose in the first two rounds and always have a few days off before they go to the next tournament, so there’s more players who deal with that than the ones that win the tournaments. So that’s why I feel that we just have to understand that having a bigger calendar or a long calendar is just part of the job, it’s just what comes with it.”
How many tournaments are there left in 2025?
Despite it being October, there is still plenty more tennis to be played in the latter stages of the 2025 season.
Currently the main tournaments are being played in China, with an ATP 1000 tournament in Shanghai and a WTA 1000 event in Wuhan.
After the conclusion of these tournaments this week, there are still 10 tournaments on the main ATP Tour, alongside the Davis Cup Finals, as well as eight events on the WTA Tour.
However, backing up Clijsters’ point, there are numerous lower-level tournaments on the ATP Challenger and WTA 125 tours, which lower ranked players compete in to help build their rankings up.
Level of tournamentATP TourWTA Tour10001 (Paris Masters)05002 (Vienna & Basel)2 (Ningbo & Tokyo)2505 (Almaty, Brussels, Stockholm, Metz & Athens)5 (Osaka, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Jiujiang & Chennai)Challenger/1253814Finals2 (ATP Finals, Next Gen Finals)1 (WTA Finals)Team Competition1 (Davis Cup Finals)0
Top players are not required to play these tournaments, but there are rules which impact the likes of Swiatek’s rankings around 1000 and 500 level events.
Despite all these tournaments remaining on the calendar this year, numerous top players including Jack Draper, Hubert Hurkacz, Elina Svitolina, Paula Badosa, Barbora Krejcikova and Daria Kasatkina have already ended their seasons for various reasons.