{"id":209725,"date":"2025-10-08T18:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T18:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/209725\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T18:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T18:40:08","slug":"kim-clijsters-suggests-theres-only-one-way-to-solve-tennis-scheduling-problem-but-the-players-do-not-want-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/209725\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Clijsters suggests there’s only one way to solve tennis’ scheduling problem but the players do not want it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/ Follow us on Google Discover <\/a> <\/p>\n

Kim Clijsters has given her verdict on a hotly debated topic among both tennis players and fans at the moment.<\/p>\n

Many players including Iga Swiatek have criticised the current tennis schedule<\/a>, calling out the WTA Tour<\/a> again at the China Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Swiatek<\/a> is not alone in her disapproval, but Carlos Alcaraz was criticised for being hypocritical<\/a> following his recent complaints.<\/p>\n

The tennis calendar has seemingly started to impact tournaments, with Andy Roddick calling out the schedule following withdrawals in Shanghai<\/a>, but Kim Clijsters<\/a> does not necessarily agree.<\/p>\n

\"KimPhoto by Dustin Satloff\/Getty ImagesKim Clijsters responds to recent complaints about the tennis schedule<\/p>\n

Recently, former world number one Karolina Pliskova called out players for complaining<\/a>, something that four-time Grand Slam champion Clijsters was asked about on a podcast for Tennis Bolshoi.<\/p>\n

While she did not explicitly say so, it appears that Clijsters somewhat agrees with Pliskova<\/a>, suggesting that she heard a lot of complaints when she was on the WTA Players Council.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been and always will be complaints about the calendar,\u201d said Clijsters. \u201cThere 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\u2019s all the same. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut in order to shorten the tennis season, the entire ranking system needs to be changed, the points system needs to be changed. That\u2019s the only way to make it a shorter schedule, but many players don\u2019t want the shorter season\u2026This is a hopeless situation. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe organisers and tournament directors do their job, giving job opportunities, and the prize money is going up. I think there\u2019s a lot of things that are going in the right direction, and it is what it is, it comes with the job, yeah that\u2019s kind of how I feel about it. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou know you can\u2019t please everybody, the tournaments need to exist, you have to have tournaments in November and December, because there\u2019s a lot of players throughout the year who don\u2019t get the opportunity to play a lot of matches. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s 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\u2019s more players who deal with that than the ones that win the tournaments. So that\u2019s 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\u2019s just what comes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

How many tournaments are there left in 2025?<\/p>\n

Despite it being October, there is still plenty more tennis to be played in the latter stages of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

Currently the main tournaments are being played in China, with an ATP<\/a> 1000 tournament in Shanghai and a WTA 1000 event in Wuhan.<\/p>\n

After the conclusion of these tournaments this week, there are still 10 tournaments on the main ATP Tour, alongside the Davis Cup<\/a> Finals, as well as eight events on the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n

However, backing up Clijsters\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Top players are not required to play these tournaments, but there are rules which impact the likes of Swiatek\u2019s rankings<\/a> around 1000 and 500 level events.<\/p>\n

Despite all these tournaments remaining on the calendar this year, numerous top players including Jack Draper<\/a>, Hubert Hurkacz<\/a>, Elina Svitolina<\/a>, Paula Badosa<\/a>, Barbora Krejcikova<\/a> and Daria Kasatkina have already ended their seasons<\/a> for various reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover Kim Clijsters has given her verdict on a hotly debated topic among both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[430,120002,99,428,654],"class_list":["post-209725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-atp","tag-kim-clijsters","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-wta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}