Straight to the chin. This is how the blow was felt, another one, in the stands of the Magic Box. When Daniil Medvedev put his hands on his right thigh just five games into his quarterfinal match against Use Lehecka. Another withdrawal due to injury of a strong man, perhaps the only one left in the tournament after Jannik Sinner did not even play this Thursday due to hip problems. He Mutual Madrid Open He was left soulless and Roland Garros, which starts in less than three weeks, fears the side effects.
Because the four bosses of the circuit, those who have led the ATP ranking since the beginning of 2023, are to a greater or lesser extent physically affected by the big parisian just around the corner. To the injuries of Sinner (2 in the world) and Medvedev (4) we must add the discomfort in the right forearm that continues to give Carlos Alcaraz headaches (3) and number one’s elbow problems, Novak Djokovicwho didn’t even make it to the tournament.
What the Russian Daria Kasatkina called “hamster wheel” It doesn’t stop spinning, and at higher and higher revolutions. The calendar has been growing more and more with competitions and expanding over time. And the Masters 1000, which once took place in a week, are doubling in length and acquiring a format similar to that of the Grand Slams in that endless search to increase income.
The tournaments are, therefore, longer, and follow one another with little room for recovery between one another. An infernal calendar that, far from helping to reduce the problem, increases it. It seems to matter little, almost all tennis players lament, as long as the ticket-making machine continues to operate at full capacity. And those who are used to reaching the final rounds, with the physical and mental demands that that entails, notice it.
Jannik Sinner en el Mutua Madrid Open. / Europe Press
Sinner has accumulated 27 games so far this year. He is followed by Medvedev, with 22, and Alcaraz, with 19 despite having been unemployed for a month and having missed Monte Carlo and Barcelona due to injury. Djokovic, more selective due to his age (36), is the one who has played the fewest matches of the four (15). Numbers that are not excessive, but that are combined with the effort of the previous year, in which they finished as the players with the most games, he is beginning to make an impact on their bodies. Vacations at the end of the year between seasons, once close to two months, have been reduced exponentially. Officially, the calendar ends in December and starts before January, leaving less than a month until disconnection.
“Certainly the better you play, The more games you play, the more risks you take and the more you tire your body, so injuries can occur. The change of surface is quick, because if you play well in Miami you have four or 5 days before Monte Carlo to train on clay. But at the same time we are no longer in Monte Carlo, so you already have some clay court training. I feel like I normally take care of my body, but you never know why this happened. However, I think that none of our injuries are related to anything“Medvedev explained a few minutes after his retirement in Madrid.
“The ATP plays with the health of tennis players”
“Currently, the calendar is too demanding. If you start the season in the first week of competition, you have to leave home on December 25 or 26 and you don’t finish until the beginning of next December. It’s almost a year of non-stop traveling and doing competition tours. I think they force us to play too many tournaments and it seems to me that the calendar is too long. In the end what the ATP does is play with the health of the tennis players having to spend so much time at the highest level, tournament after tournament. That’s why I think we have to change something and find a solution“Alcaraz, who at 20 years old already knows firsthand what it is like to deal with a treacherous physique, argued before the American tour.
Because the ranking tyranny, which forces you to play constantly to defend the points won the previous year, complicates the possibility of stopping. To this we must add travel and other factors such as improvisation when setting schedules and others such as the nightlife that players are sometimes subjected to when playing until the wee hours of the morning. And it must also be said, the appearance of exhibition tournaments such as the Hopman Cup and the Laver Cup, as well as exhibitions such as the 6Kings Cup, scheduled for after the US Open, succulent for the protagonists’ pockets but which represent an extra physical burden that they assume unilaterally.
The problem, therefore, is entrenched and there is no solution in sight. Despite the complaints, the establishments turn a deaf ear. The ATP requires tennis players in the top-30 of the ATP ranking to play at least 16 tournaments a year (the four Grand Slams, eight of the nine Masters 1000 – the exception is Monte Carlo – and at least four ATP500 category tournaments). And so it will continue, at least for now.
2024-05-03 05:12:42
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