The tennis calendar is very long as there is only about a month of the year when the sport is not actively being played, and world number one Iga Swiatek is not a fan of it.
Swiatek has grown quite a bit since becoming world number one for the first time. She's much more comfortable speaking her mind about tennis-related things and the WTA Tour in general.
We've heard her raise her voice about topics like mental health but also the war in Ukraine and scheduling. She really had a big problem with the way the end of the season was set up because she reluctantly had to skip the Billie Jean King Cup a couple of times.
It created quite a bit of backlash back home in Poland, which certainly wasn't that enjoyable for her. She now touched upon the WTA calendar, which, in her mind, is too dense and is likely to contribute to injuries.
The Polish player was speaking about it at the 2024 Dubai Championships, which was her second consecutive WTA 1000 tournament, after winning at the Qatar Open the previous week.
"The calendar is tough. Not many players will be able to go to further rounds of tournaments all the time. Yeah, there will be injuries. There will be pull-outs."
As the world number one, she basically doesn't have to play the full calendar, but there are still mandatory events she has to take part in.
"There will be people that are too fatigued to play their game. That will also contribute. Sometimes the underdog wins and it's just easier for them. It's a mix of these things, I would say. Yeah, that's how the thing will look like, I guess."
Currently, there doesn't seem to be a very good solution to the perceived problems. It's just part of tennis, and ultimately, each player decides which events they want to play outside of those that all have to play.
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