“It might make sense to look at it”: Karen Khachanov urges tennis authorities to fix one thing after forced retirement from Cincinnati Open

Russia’s Karen Khachanov has become the latest player to call for changes in the tennis schedule. There have been a lot of voices raised recently after the hectic tennis schedule. Last year, two big-name players, then women’s world number one, Poland’s Iga Swiatek and men’s world number two, Carlos Alcaraz, raised concern about the challenges of the tennis schedule for players to deal with.

“Probably during the next few years gonna be even more tournaments, more mandatory tournaments. So, I mean, probably they are going to kill us in some way,” said Alcaraz back then. Those words did not go down well with some of the members of the tennis community, as some former players came out and criticised Alcaraz, especially after he participated in exhibition events such as the Six Kings Slam in Saudi Arabia.

Now, Khachanov has asked the authorities to look into the tennis schedule. That came after Khachanov was forced to retire from the fourth-round match of the ongoing Cincinnati Open against Germany’s Alexander Zverev. The final score of the match was 7-5, 3-0. Talking after the match, Khachanov stated that he was disappointed after failing to complete a match for the first time in his career. Khachanov also admitted that the injury which forced him to retire midway through the match is the same one that has been ‘bothering’ him for a few years.

“To be honest, for the first time in my career, I didn’t finish a match and withdrew. Of course, it’s not a very good feeling, because there are spectators and they came to watch. It’s a strange feeling,” said Khachanov while speaking to the media after the match. “If you are not ready, you don’t go out there, in principle, but it was during the match that I felt discomfort and my back started hurting. In general, it’s the same injury that has been bothering me over the past few years. Therefore, I decided that there was probably no point in playing on. There is a Grand Slam coming up, and I don’t want to make the situation worse. So yes, I decided not to continue.”

Schedule is quite difficult": Karen Khachanov

Talking about his chances to recover ahead of the US Open 2025, which will begin in less than 10 days in New York, Khachanov was of the opinion that it is too early to predict anything about that and stated that injuries remain ‘part’ of the job for athletes competing at the highest level. “It’s too early to say, I don’t know anything yet,” said Khachanov. “No need to get down about it, injuries are unfortunately part of our job.”

At the end of the discussion, Khachanov spoke at length about the need to look at the different aspects of the tennis calendar. Khachanov stated that he had no time to prepare for the hard-court events after Wimbledon as he had to fly straightaway to Canada. Khachanov also stated that missing a tournament or two is easy for players who have multiple Grand Slams, such as Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, but that is not the case with every other player.

“Maybe? Who knows? If we speak generally, our schedule is quite difficult,” said Khachanov. “I don’t want to complain, but at these big tournaments, on one hand, we have more days to rest, but on the other hand, the schedule is still very busy, jam-packed. Even after Wimbledon, I didn’t have much time to rest before I started trying to prepare for hard [courts]. I immediately flew to Canada. It’s probably time to look at the schedule, it’s not nothing that [Jannik] Sinner and [Carlos] Alcaraz skipped the tournament [Canadian Open]. It’s probably easier in their case to do this, because they’ve already won a couple of Slams this year, but again, it might make sense to look at it.”