Carlos Alcaraz opened the topic of the tennis calendar at this year's Laver Cup, and Alexander Zverev joined him in saying that the calendar is too long.
Zverev hasn't really changed his opinion on this matter, as he said in the past that the calendar was too long. Tennis players have the longest season of all sports, and they don't really have the chance to opt out of it.
There are mandatory events, quite a few of them, and their length has been expanding. That creates a lot of stress on the body that accumulates quite a bit.
Since Alcaraz opened the topic, the media asked Zverev what he thought about it, and he admitted that he didn't feel too much fatigue at this point in his tennis career, but that doesn't change the fact that the season is too long and doesn’t need to be.
"No. I mean, so far not. Ask me again in about seven, eight years' time. Then I'll probably answer differently. But we do have the longest season in sports. I mean, I have said it before. It's unnecessarily long. We have unnecessarily, you know, we have unnecessary amount of tournaments."
"I do believe that we don't need to play now from the 27th of December, when the United Cup starts, till the 19th or 20th of November where the World Tour Finals end, and plus if you play Davis Cup afterwards, it's even longer."
The main problem with such a long season is that players don't really have time to rest their bodies properly and, more importantly, prepare them for another grueling year. Fatigue is just piling up, and it's extremely difficult to handle all of that without any physical problems.
"So there is no time to rest, but more importantly, the rest, there is no time to prepare your body. There is no time to build muscle. There is no time to just say I'm not going to touch my tennis racquet for a month and I'm only going to physically prepare for a long and very difficult season."
"We don't have that time. We come back from holidays, and we start with tennis practice straightaway, because we just, in two or three weeks' time, we have to play in Australia. So that just doesn't exist."
Another aspect of it is that the fatigue piles up over the years and cuts careers short. Nowadays, players have to minimize the schedule, like Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic in recent years, to have any chance at longevity.
That's not good for an ambitious player who wants to do well and has ambitions to succeed, because then playing a lot is important.
"It exists in other sports, and that's why I think injury prevention and longevity is maybe a bit better in the other sports, except if you're playing a schedule like Roger played in last few years of his career and Novak is doing right now where they're taking longer periods of time off."
"But if you're an ambitious young person still who feels like hasn't achieved the things that they want to achieve yet in their career, that's not an option."
"You know, the tour goes on without you. That's not really an option. So I do feel like we need to do something about it. I do think that -- I mean, I'm on the player council, so I do think the ATP is working towards that. It's not an easy solution, but it's definitely a solution that needs to be made."
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