A fatigued Alex De Minaur crashed out of the French Open on Thursday and referred to as for the tennis calendar to be shortened, warning {that a} failure to take motion quickly might end in gamers burning out bodily and mentally.
The season kicked off with the United Cup combined staff event in December, 33 days after the Davis Cup Finals resulted in Spain, and the grueling nature of the circuit has come beneath a harsh highlight in recent times.
“Nobody’s obtained an answer,” De Minaur stated after his 2-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 second-round defeat by Alexander Bublik.
“However the resolution is easy: You shorten the schedule, proper? What’s not regular is that for the final three, 4 years I’ve had two days off after the Davis Cup and I’ve gone straight into preseason, straight into the brand new season once more.
“When you begin, you do not end till Nov. 24. So it is by no means ending. The way in which it is structured … I needed to take care of that. I am nonetheless coping with that proper now.
“The answer is you shorten [the tour], as a result of what is going on to occur is gamers’ careers are going to get shorter and shorter as a result of they’re simply going to burn out mentally. There’s simply an excessive amount of tennis.”
Twice French Open finalist Casper Ruud stated after his shock exit on Wednesday that the ATP’s rating system was like a “rat race” and that gamers felt compelled to compete within the males’s tour’s necessary occasions even when they had been carrying accidents.
The seventh seed, who misplaced to unseeded Nuno Borges, stated he had been battling knee ache.
Requested whether or not the tennis calendar made it tough to take break day and absolutely heal an harm, the 26-year-old Norwegian stated gamers’ rankings would take a success in the event that they skipped necessary occasions.
“Effectively, it is like a rat race in terms of the rankings,” Ruud stated.
“You are feeling you are obligated to play with sure guidelines that the ATP have arrange with the necessary occasions. You are feeling such as you lose quite a bit should you do not present up and play … the punishments are fairly laborious, when it comes to everybody else will play, achieve factors, and you will not.”
Reuters has contacted the ATP for remark.
Ruud additionally stated gamers’ year-end bonuses are lower by 25% in the event that they miss a compulsory occasion.
“For those who do not play a compulsory occasion, they lower 25% of your year-end bonus,” he stated. “You are forcing gamers to indicate up injured or sick or no matter, when that is not what I believe may be very truthful.”
