doom + gloom.

are the juniors watching? they're next!

That's actually an excellent point, homos. What kid wants to work 7 days a week, 11 months of the year? I'd pick footy.

Money is the root of all evil.

footy?

football? :)

Cheryl: I hope this article, by highlighting the problems that face the top ranking players, will put an end to the snide comments made by certain people on this site when players voice their concerns about the punishing schedule.

I did wonder during Shanghai if some of the withdrawals were perhaps a show of solidarity for Roddick following his much publicised criticisms with the veiled threat of 'industrial action'.

I hate to say this Ed, but if it were...contrived, I wouldn't have a single problem with it.

Perhaps we just have suspicious minds.

I'd have to agree that some of the players quit rather than finishing their matches. However, as a fan, I love the long season. Players have to set their schedules accordingly. The only change that's feasible is not having mandatory tournaments for top players. Other players need a chance to win some tournaments and make a living. Look at Olivier Rochus right now playing Thomaz Bellucci in the Stockholm semifinal. Don't these guys deserve a chance to be here? Top players need to opt out of these smaller tournaments to showcase some of the other talent out there.

They can have as many tournaments as they want but to make 18 mandatory is far too much. Every sport needs stars to sell the tickets, and if they want the stars to be fresh and give of their best when they play they shouldn't work them into the ground.

Tennis is an individual sport. There is only one Rafael Nadal, only one Roger Federer, and only one Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. They have to turn up every time, no one can substitute for them to give them a rest. With team sport, players have time to recover from injury because someone else can take their place. Tennis has become a treadmill for the players. They hardly have time to do normal things, they are either training or playing or recovering from injury.

As Cheryl says, it's a business, just like so many other sport, and once that happens, the players just become the commodities, and no one cares about their welfare, all they want is the money to roll in.

Was Soderling's retirement another strategic withdrawal? After all he has protected his points by reaching the SF and would not wish to risk aggravating an elbow problem before the Paris Masters by playing a tough match against Baghdatis.

To ed251137, it's possible he did that but less likely in front of the home crowd one would think.
To carrie, you seem quite argumentative despite the fact that I said in my post,"not having mandatory tournaments for top players".
To cherylmurray's comment about what kid wants to work that much, if you truly love what you do it doesn't seem like work. Some of us would give our left arm (provided we were right-handed and had a good one-handed backhand) to be able to play ATP tennis for a living rather than having a 40+ hour office job with limited vacation time. It's a privilige to do what they do (play a game) for a living and if they consider it work they don't appreciate it. Besides, they still have lots of time off from playing in actual tournaments and staying in shape should not be an arduous task for those who love the game. Once again (as in basketball, baseball, football,etc) we have a bunch of ingrateful spoiled brats, led by the ultimate prick Roddick, who are over-paid for playing sports and have the nerve to complain about anything.

I'm not so sure. He is very ambitious and is desperately trying to get to the MTF. It is just because one might have expected him to soldier on in front of his home crowd which makes me wonder. He had treatment on his elbow towards the end of the QF but went on to win convincingly.

brilliant as always cheryl

i actually didn't realise that wtf is an acronym for "world tour finals". i think that's brilliant :D

thank you Sib69.

yes. The WTF tournament - a stroke of genius on the part of the ATP. Seriously? NOBODY thought of that? I mean, it's really quite hilarious.

cheryl, i can't speak for the kids but if i were in their shoes, i'd be more than a little worried. what job is perfect? there's always gonna be issues to deal with - with committees, rules, drug tests, schedules, personalities, whatever's mandatory or not, etc.
both rog and rafa have said they wanna try to alter the schedule and a few other things, so many players complain at pressers about the schedule, the injuries and retirements, pretty much say it all - how much more evidence do we need? the players themselves have said tennis players retire earlier than those of other sports. i'd take their word for it and not anyone who hasn't been in their shoes.

A few thoughts:

1.) The WTF tournament. Love it!

2.) Do tennis players hang it up faster than others because of the schedule or the fact that the wheels always go first and you need your legs so much in tennis that even the slightest decrease means you're finished as a top player? I'm not arguing, just asking the question. It seems to me that few are the guys like Jimmy Connors who stick around long after their peak just because they like to win on any given day.

3.) Are 18 tournaments really too much to ask for? Playing Devil's advocate here, but considering what other athletes do in other sports, is it really too much to ask the top tennis players to play their sport 22 weeks (two weeks per Slam) out of 52 in a year, not counting Davis Cup (and then it's 26 -- half the year)?

The problem, in my opinion, is not the number of events, it's the spread -- what other sport encourages its players to take time off in the middle of the season? -- and the playing surfaces. Just accordion up the year so that the WTF tourney comes at the start of October almost right after the Open -- when tennis interest is still near its peak -- shift the schedule around so that travel is at a minimum throughout, put in more grass events in place of concrete here and there, and that should pretty much take care of the problem without reducing the number of events. (You can move some of the 250s to post WTF for those players who need to play to start building their points to get ready for the next season.)

SP, because tennis is an individual sport, you cannot compare it to team sports where substitutes can be brought in. If you take idividual sports like athletics, boxing and golf, they don't have as many tournaments in the year, and they are not as physically taxing. So yes, because of the punishing schedule, tennis players do burn out faster.

A tennis match could last for up to five hours running around with no interval, golf is a stroll let's face it, and sprinting which is the closest to tennis, takes about 10 seconds, OK maybebe 20 secs for 400 metres. How long does a boxing match last, and how often does a boxer compete in a year? So really, tennis is in a class of it's own.

I definitely buy into the fact that they should ease up a little bit on the mandatory tournaments, to give the players breathing space. If they want to play exhibition matches in their own time, they should not be pilloried for doing so, that's all part of promoting the sport, apart from being human and not wanting to pass up on lucrative deals because they've earned the right to be paid to appear.

Not being too critical but a 200m takes 20 sec; even Usain Bolt can't run that fast in a 400m.

OK, we are only talking semantics, I meant 200 mtrs but my point is still valid.

SP - I'm going to address the 18 tournaments thing, because its a sticking point with me. Are 18 tournaments too much for a guy like...say...Jeremy Chardy? Probably not, because he'll lose after a match or two in most of them. BUT if we're talking Roger, Rafa and Muzza, then you BET it's a big ask. Those guys win A LOT. That means nearly every time they enter a tournament, they're playing 5 or so competitive matches. And that doesn't take into consideration the wear and tear of traveling literally around the globe and training.

Cheryl, what good does it do a sport if its top stars are off (and by off, I mean not playing in front of a paying audience) two-thirds of the year?

If the number of matches is the problem (and I never knew that it was until just recently -- my guess is ATP wasn't so strict about forcing everyone to play X number of tournaments 20 years ago), then ATP needs to shrink the field at each event -- not reduce the number of tournaments. People want to see Federer, Nadal, et. al. No one except the hardest of hard-core fans really cares about the Podunk MasterCard Invitational with Tipsarevic-v-Fish seeded to meet in the finals.

Perhaps they should do it Davis Cup style: Only the top 16 make the Masters; the top 8 (still) make the finals. That way, it's four matches (or five in the case of the WTF) to the title. (Slams are separate and should remain as they are -- they SHOULD force you to do more to win one.) Everyone else is relegated to the 500s and the 250s. The top 16 can play as many 500s and 250s as they want if they need the practice/points.

So, let us say for the sake of argument that there are 11 Masters events (re-adding Hamburg and adding, let's say, Dubai and Queens or Newport -- there ought to be a grass Masters). Set them up so there is a one-week gap between each Masters event and/or Slam. If Fed, Nadal, Muzza "win a lot" they might have to play 44 matches; 49 including the WTF and 77 if they go all the way at each Slam.

One possible schedule:

Jan. 14: Shanghai
Jan. 28: Aussie
Feb. 18: LA
March 4: Miami
March 18: Dubai
April 1: Paris
April 15: Monte Carlo
April 29: Rome
May 13: Hamburg
June 3: French
June 24: Queens/Newport (Queens would obviously be better, travel-wise)
July 8: Wimbledon
July 29: Toronto/Montreal
Aug. 12: Cincy
Aug. 26: U.S.
Sept. 30: WTF

(Davis Cup is played after the season.)

It's pretty similar to what's there now, but without Davis Cup intermingled and essentially nothing after the U.S. Open until the WTF.

Is 77 matches (that's if you make the finals at every event) playing every other or every third week over 365 days -- or even 275 if they shrink the schedule three months as I suggested -- really too much to ask?

I think both Roger AND Rafa would be more than happy to adhere to a schedule like that. An off season that comprises 3 months seems more than reasonable. An off season that is barely a month does not.

And you're right. Without the top players, the sport might as well be defunct. But what happens if the top players are so beat up that they stop playing in a few years? Who have we got to replace Roger and Rafa? The ATP needs to strike some sort of balance.

cherylmurray: in fact many of the top players are mid-late twenties and beyond even, think Haas. Where are the young stars to be, can only think of Dimitrov. ( OK Murray, Delpot, Djko, Rafa are early twenties .)

Thought others might be interested in this:


I'd hate to be on men's tour, says Serena


DOHA ? Serena Williams believes that when it comes to the grind of touring and travelling, the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have a lot to learn.

After the conclusion of the WTA Championships here on Sunday, the women's tour shuts down for two months.

By contrast, the ATP men's tour finishes in London on November 22 with Nadal then slated for a Davis Cup final date from December 2-4.

"I couldn't imagine being on the men's tour, playing that long. That would be very difficult for me," said Williams.

Earlier in October, the men's tournament in Shanghai was hit by nine injury-forced retirements, adding more fuel to the fire over the lengthy playing schedule.

Nadal's ongoing problems with his brittle knees saw him forced out of defending his Wimbledon title this year and was also a contributing factor in his shock French Open exit.

French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova believes that the women's tour has been boosted by agreements on the maximum numbers of top tier events the leading women are obliged to play.

"I think the WTA Tour has heard so many players complaining about how bad the schedule was before," said the Russian.

"We are women and we're not so strong to play all the year, and we have so many injuries. The calendar suffers, the tournaments suffer, they were smart enough to change."

Sadly, I don't think anything is going to change with the ATP anytime soon.

TO the ATP...how can you justify or explain the way you expect your players to act like machines? The schedules you create for them and demand of them is inhuman...They are human and have human needs.+ bodies. They give their all...STOP taking advantage of them...YOU are ruining them...Where is your sense of right + wrong...or do you rather see $$$$$$ + broken bodies ?...How many top class athlete players have you had retire out of matches due to injury.?....stop the $$$$$ merry go round and do the right and decent thing.Look after your players.. It's called respect!!...+ Wisdom..

In the end the ATP is a for-profit business and not a charity. Plus the top players are well paid for their efforts so it is understandable if not purely ehtical. If they don't like it that much then they should play soccer or volleyball or something else.