Taylor Fritz suggests the tennis schedule is only getting worse as he finds it “insane” that some players competed at the Hopman Cup straightaway after Wimbledon, and then also came to Washington to start their North American hard-court swing.
In the last few days, the Toronto Masters organizers suffered several major blows after Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic and Jack Draper all decided to withdraw from the tournament slated to start July 27th. To no one’s surprise, some instantly pointed out to the crowded schedule as the reason why it happened.
Fritz, the fourth-ranked ATP star, lost in the Wimbledon semifinal to Alcaraz on July 11th. This week, the American is kicking off his summer on hard courts in Washington, where he is playing for the first time since 2023. However, while the 27-year-old is already back in action, he perfectly understands why some needs more time to rest before returning to competitive action.
Fritz on the tennis schedule: We are just lengthening it… It’s insane
“I mean, probably pretty much all the players for a long time have been asking for the season to be shorter, but all we are doing is just lengthening it, adding more stuff, we’re adding more, like, longer tournaments. The Hopman Cup was after Wimbledon. I didn’t even know this was going on. They had an event with like Felix [Auger-Aliassime] and [Flavio] Cobolli playing a tournament right after Wimbledon, and one of them is coming and playing here. It’s insane. We are just adding stuff to the calendar over and over again,” Fritz explained in Washington.
Last year, ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi delivered a blunt statement when asked about players’ schedule complaints. In his message, Gaudenzi pretty much said that players could choose to “play fewer exhibitions.” Some interpreted it as a clear sign that the ATP authorities had no interest in making major changes to the calendar.
