Australia’s
Alex de Minaur has become the latest big-name
player to demand the tennis season to be shorter. There has been a lot of
discussions regarding the length of the tennis season in the recent past with
some big-name players, including the likes of Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and Iga
Swiatek.
That criticism was directly pointed towards the length of
the WTA and ATP 1000 events, which are now being played over the course of two
weeks. Most recently, Australia’s Jordan Thompson also complained about the
demanding schedule. Now, another Australian player has joined the ranks
in complaining about the schedule.
Australia’s De Minaur, who has been recently knocked out
of the ongoing
French Open after losing to Alexander Bublik in the second round
in a five-set thriller with a score of 2-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2, talked to the
media after the match, stated that there is an urgent need to curb the size. The
current world number nine, who, for the eighth time in nine appearance failed
to get past the second round at the Roland Garros, was of the opinion that if the
season has not been shortened, it will only mean that players career will become
shorter as sooner or later, the athletes will start to ‘burn out mentally’.
"No one's got a solution,” he said. "But the
solution is simple: You shorten the schedule, right? What's not normal is that
for the last three, four years I've had two days off after the Davis Cup and
I've gone straight into preseason, straight into the new season again. Once you
start, you don't finish until Nov. 24. So it's never ending. The way it's
structured ... I had to deal with that. I'm still dealing with that right now. The
solution is you shorten [the tour], because what's going to happen is players'
careers are going to get shorter and shorter because they're just going to burn
out mentally. There's just too much tennis."