The world No 1 expects to \u200cskip events again this year and face likely sanctions rather than put her health at risk.<\/p>\n
Published On 8 Jan 20268 Jan 2026<\/p>\n
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World number one Aryna Sabalenka has accused tennis authorities of \u201cfollowing their interests\u201d and failing to put player welfare first over what she called an \u201cinsane\u201d tennis season.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian expects to \u200cskip events this year rather than put her health at risk over \u200dthe course of \u200dthe season, even though she knows she is likely to be sanctioned by the WTA Tour for doing so, the world number one said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Top players are obliged to compete in all four Grand Slams, 10 WTA 1000 \u2060tournaments and six WTA 500 events under WTA rules, with the punishment for missing them \u200branging from rankings points deductions to fines.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Sabalenka competed in \u200djust three WTA 500 events \u2013 Brisbane, Stuttgart and Berlin \u2013 making her one of several high-ranked players, including world number two Iga Swiatek, to be docked ranking points.<\/p>\n
Asked if she would change \u200dher plans for \u20602026, the four-time Grand Slam champion told reporters: \u201cThe season is definitely insane, and that\u2019s not good for all of us, as you see so many players getting injured \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rules are quite tricky with mandatory events, but I\u2019m still skipping a couple of events in order to protect my body, because I struggled a lot last season,\u201d she said after beating Sorana Cirstea at the Brisbane \u200bInternational.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though the results were really consistent, some of the \u200ctournaments I had been playing completely sick or I\u2019d been really exhausted from overplaying. This season, we will try to manage it a little bit better, even though they are going to fine me by \u200cthe end of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s tricky to do that. You cannot skip 1000 events. It\u2019s really tricky, and I \u200cthink that\u2019s insane what they do. I think they \u2060just follow their interests, but they\u2019re not focusing on protecting all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The number of events in the tennis calendar has been a frequent complaint in recent months among the sport\u2019s biggest names.<\/p>\n
Men\u2019s world number one Carlos Alcaraz is another to have voiced concern about the amount of tennis he plays, although he has also signed up to feature in lucrative exhibition matches.<\/p>\n
He faces great rival Jannik Sinner in one such event on Saturday in South Korea, barely a week before the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s and women\u2019s circuits have faced criticism due to their 11-month seasons, and both tours came under new scrutiny during the \u201cAsian swing\u201d towards \u200cthe end of last year, with injuries piling up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world No 1 expects to \u200cskip events again this year and face likely sanctions rather than put…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[1204,1246,3,1079,99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-395428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-asia-pacific","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-sport","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395428","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=395428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}