Fritz Slams ATP Calendar After Alcaraz, Sinner, Djokovic Withdraw From Toronto

Thursday, 24 July 2025 at 23:40

byJordan Reynolds

Taylor Fritz did not hold back when asked about the packed tennis schedule, passionately calling for the season to be shortened.

The topic of the calendar was brought back into focus by the number of withdrawals from the 2025 Canadian Open. Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, and Novak Djokovic all removed themselves from the entry list.

WTA world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka also said she will not be playing in the women's singles in Montreal. She cited fatigue after making seven finals already this season, including at the 2025 Australian Open and the 2025 French Open.

Matteo Berrettini and Grigor Dimitrov were other ATP players who withdrew from the Canadian Open. The tournament and the 2025 Cincinnati Open after it being changed from 12 days to 7 undoubtedly influenced some of the withdrawals.

Players not wanting to play at two events that last over three weeks in total without any week in between is entirely understandable. The Canadian Open also starts less than two weeks after the 2025 Wimbledon Championships finished.

Many ATP and WTA stars thought the schedule was already too long before the expanded 1000-level tournaments at the Madrid Open, Italian Open, Canadian Open, and the Shanghai Masters made it even more intense.

Fritz has been a frequent critic of the calendar and went even further than the past in a press conference after the 2025 Citi Open. The world No. 4 said almost every player wants the grueling schedule shortened.

"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 2024 US Open runner-up used last week's 2025 Hopman Cup as an example. Fritz admitted he did not know that the team event was happening, and mentioned that some of those involved flew straight to Washington to compete at the 2025 Citi Open.

Read also

"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 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."

Rather than cutting tournaments to replace them with an extra week for other events, Fritz wants organizers to be brave enough to reduce the number of tournaments without adding anything else to reduce the season's length.

"I think they obviously shortened parts to obviously give themselves an extra week to do this, to make it the three weeks between the two tournaments, but we should just be, you know, I think it's funny how we can shorten, we find ways to shorten the schedule to make room for other tournaments, but we can't find room to shorten the schedule for there to be nothing."

"I'd love to see it just go back to two weeks, and maybe we can have an extra, can shorten the season a week, I don't know. But it's a lot of tennis. It's a lot of tennis upcoming."