Nothing More Ridiculous Than Players Whining About The Schedule

The ATP and WTA need to mute all of it’s players that complain about the season schedule being too long. It may be the most ridiculous whine in professional sports.

There are hundreds and thousands of tennis players who wish they could play on the professional tour and many have sacrificed their lives to try to do it. Most of them fail.

Hearing pro tennis players complain about having to play too many tournaments is a bad look for the sport and it does not do the business any favors. Who wants to pay to see tennis players who are being forced to play? Which sponsors would want to invest in a tournament where players do not want to be there.

Players who whine about the schedule should be silenced and censored and perhaps face punishment, in the form of some alternative role at a tournament, such as working a day at a tournament site managing garbage removal or washing dishes or serving meals in the venue restaurant.

I know tennis player who drives over an hour to play a pick up match. I know a player who took two trains and a bus to a tournament from Long Island to Mahwah, NJ, only to lose by default when his one racquet popped a string in the second game of the first set.

There are countless other examples of die-hard, devoted tennis players who wish they could play just one pro match.

You never hear a baseball player saying there are too many games in the Major League Baseball season or pitchers fastballs are too fist. You never hear a pro boxer complaining he got hit in the head too many times. You never hear an NHL player griping that the body checks are getting too hard. These players just suck it up and keep playing the games they love.

Tennis needs to eliminate this nonsense of players snitting about excessive scheduling – and if the problem persists, fine or suspend these repeat offenders.

Novak Djokovic on Alcaraz and Swiatek complaining about the long tennis calendar: “But then there are exhibitions as well that players are signing up for, so it’s a little bit contradictory. In the end, I can say that the players are not united enough. Players are not participating enough when they should be. So they make the comments and they complain, and then they go away. And then if something is wrong, after a certain amount of time they come back again. But you have to invest the time, you have to invest energy yourself, not your agent, not your team, not your parents, not anybody, yourself, to dedicate yourself to understand how the system works, to understand what are the things that can be done to be reversed, to be improved in terms of the players’ interest. For that to happen you need the top players particularly, you know, to sit down, roll up their sleeves, and really care a bit more about participating in understanding all of the hot topic, I would say. Because going out in the media and talking about this and that, okay, it might stir up some energy or some attention. But in the end of the day it’s not going to change, nothing is going to change, you know?”

ATP · WTA

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