Andrey Rublev played the final match of the Paris Masters Friday programme, and as you can imagine, he was not happy about it.
Have you ever heard about a player complaining about the scheduling at the Paris Masters? You have? Well, add another name to that list as Andrey Rublev blasted the ATP during his post-match interview after beating Alex de Minaur.
The story is all too familiar as it was the final match of the programme or rather the night session, meaning it would begin only after the previous matches finished. As the previous one between Novak Djokovic and Holger Rune extended quite a bit, the players had to wait.
It didn't matter that there was a whole court free and available within the complex; it had to go on the biggest court, despite it being clear that the match wouldn't be finished before midnight.
Tickets, revenue, and much more are a reason for that. In any case, Rublev wasn't happy about finishing after midnight because he would be playing the next day at around 4 p.m. local time against no other than the world no. 1 Djokovic.
That's only about 12 hours after he's going to bed, making it less than ideal. He made his feelings on the topic known after the match, calling the schedule amazing.
[To get to sleep after a match like this] First of all I have dinner, treatment, arrive to the hotel, take a shower... I will go to sleep at 4, 5? Crazy. Amazing schedule, thank you! I am in the council of ATP and... ATP, we are together!
He's obviously not been the only one to criticize the schedule this week, as plenty of other players did. We've seen Jannik Sinner pulling out of the event because the schedule completely disregarded the circumstances around his previous win.
Wawrinka was another who blasted the ATP for the schedules as he finished way beyond midnight. Rublev was actually kind of lucky with the way his match finished because it could have gone on for a bit longer. In any case, he's facing Djokovic a bit later on Saturday, not even a full 24 hours later. Probably half of that.