COLUMN - The Canadian Open isn’t being abandoned. It’s being scheduled out of the calendar
ATPSaturday, 25 July 2026 at 15:05
The outrage from Tennis Canada over the latest withdrawals from the Canadian Open is as predictable as it is misplaced.
After Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic announced they would skip Montréal, Tennis Canada CEO Gavin Ziv and Montréal Tournament Director Valérie Tétreault lamented what they described as a growing problem of last-minute withdrawals. They called on the ATP to address the issue, arguing that the integrity of Masters 1000 tournaments is at stake.
Plethora of problems taking its toll
The integrity of the tournament isn’t the problem. The schedule is. And Tennis Canada helped create it.
For years, tournament organizers pushed for the expansion of the Canadian Open from a traditional one-week event into a sprawling two-week Masters 1000 with a 96-player draw. The sales pitch was obvious. More sessions. More tickets. More television. More sponsorship. More prestige.
What nobody seemed willing to acknowledge was the obvious tradeoff. The tennis calendar is not made of rubber.
Adding another week to one tournament doesn’t create more weeks in the year. It simply demands more from the same players during the busiest stretch of the season. The result was entirely foreseeable.
Players now face two marathon Masters 1000 events—Canada and Cincinnati—played back-to-back immediately before the US Open. That is nearly a month of elite competition before the year’s final Grand Slam even begins.
Elite athletes don’t think that way anymore. Today’s top players manage workloads the same way NBA stars monitor minutes and NFL teams limit preseason snaps. Every tournament is weighed against the larger objective of peaking at the events that matter most.
Bigger events on the horizon
For virtually every player with realistic ambitions in New York, the US Open matters more than Canada. That isn’t disrespect. It’s reality.
If players are going to skip one of the two expanded Masters events, Canada’s place on the calendar makes it the obvious candidate. Play Cincinnati, stay in the United States, remain in the same time zone, continue practicing in similar conditions, and roll directly into the US Open.
Or play Canada first, change countries, navigate customs, adjust logistics, spend another week on court, then travel again to Cincinnati before finally heading back to New York.
That isn’t a difficult calculation. It’s common sense. Which makes Tennis Canada’s public statements remarkably tone-deaf. Tournament officials speak as though an unforeseen crisis has suddenly emerged.
World number one Jannik Sinner will not participate in the Canadian Open for the second consecutive year
Nothing unforeseen has happened. The incentives changed. The schedule changed. Player behavior changed exactly as any reasonable observer should have expected. What is especially frustrating is hearing officials suggest that the ATP needs to “protect the integrity” of Masters 1000 tournaments.
Protect them from what? From the scheduling model they championed? This isn’t an ATP problem. It isn’t a player problem. It certainly isn’t Jannik Sinner’s or Novak Djokovic’s problem. It’s a Tennis Canada problem.
When you advocate for a tournament format that asks players to spend nearly a month grinding through two expanded Masters events immediately before a Grand Slam, you don’t get to act surprised when they begin making strategic choices.
Solution still a long way off
The most astonishing part of this entire episode is that Tennis Canada still seems to believe the solution lies in convincing players to behave differently. It doesn’t. Players are acting rationally. The calendar isn’t. Unless something changes, this is only the beginning.
As careers become longer, sports science becomes more sophisticated, and players become even more protective of their bodies, skipping Canada will become less controversial and more routine. Many of the sport’s biggest names will conclude that Cincinnati provides the better path into the US Open.
That is not an indictment of Montréal. It is an indictment of a schedule that never should have been designed this way. Tennis Canada wanted a bigger tournament. It got one. Now it is discovering that bigger isn’t always better. Sometimes, it simply makes yourself easier to skip.
Aron SolomonGuest Author
A Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist for his groundbreaking op-ed in The Independent exposing the NFL’s “race-norming” policies, Aron Solomon, JD, is a globally recognized thought leader in law, media, and strategy.
As Chief Strategy Officer for AMPLIFY, he leverages his deep expertise to shape the future of legal marketing. Aron has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania and was honored as a Fastcase 50 recipient, recognizing him among the world’s top legal innovators. A prolific commentator on law, business, and culture, his insights regularly appear in Newsweek, The Hill, Crunchbase News, and Literary Hub.
He has also been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today, ESPN, TechCrunch, BuzzFeed, Venture Beat and countless other leading global media outlets. We are proud to have Aron on board at TennisUpToDate, where his deep tennis expertise enriches the site with sharp, original columns that connect the sport to wider cultural debates.
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