"Sometimes people don't understand us": Carlos Alcaraz responds to criticism for participating in exhibition events despite complaining about tough schedule

Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz has responded to criticism for playing exhibition events despite complaining about demanding schedules. Schedule has remained a hot topic in tennis, where both men’s and women’s players have highlighted how difficult it is to continue producing at the highest level with so few breaks.

Back in 2024, the current world number one, Alcaraz, became the first high-profile player to complain about the tough schedule. Alcaraz stated that the schedule is going to ‘kill’ some players and also urged the authorities to do something about it, as players are bound to get exhausted.

"I've seen and I've heard a lot of players complain about the schedule, about the calendar as well," said Alcaraz. "So I'm talking about myself, that the schedule, it's been so tight since the first week of January till the last week of November. We have to talk about it ourselves and we have to do something about it."

He was not the only one to raise concerns about the demanding schedule. Recently, the former world number one and Serbia’s legendary tennis star, Novak Djokovic, also spoke about the tough schedule. The 38-year-old, who is regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of men’s tennis in the Open era, having won as many as 24 Grand Slam titles, recently featured at the Shanghai Masters and was knocked out in the semifinals by Poland’s Valentin Vacherot in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4. After the competition, Djokovic admitted the tennis schedule remains tough, but also highlighted that the players are not ‘united enough’ to address the problem.

“As a player and someone that has been playing on the highest level for more than 20 years, I can say that the players are not united enough,” said Djokovic. “Players are not participating enough when they should be. So they make the comments and they complain, and then they go away. And then if something is wrong, after a certain amount of time they come back again. But you have to invest the time, you have to invest energy yourself, not your agent, not your team, not your parents, not anybody, yourself, to dedicate yourself to understand how the system works, to understand what are the things that can be done to be reversed, to be improved in terms of the players’ interest.”

Alcaraz is now set to feature in the Six Kings Slam exhibition event. The second edition of the exhibition event will be held from October 16 to 19 in Riyadh, with six top players participating. Italy’s Jannik Sinner will be defending his title as he lifted it last year after beating Alcaraz with a score of 6–7 (5–7), 6–3, 6–3.

Along with Sinner and Alcaraz, the other four players to take part in the event will be Djokovic, America’s Taylor Fritz, Germany’s Alexander Zverev, and Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas. Alcaraz spoke to the media before the start of the competition and responded to criticism about playing exhibition events, despite having complained about stiff challenges. Alcaraz was of the opinion that playing an exhibition event is entirely different from playing in ATP tournaments.

"A lot of players are talking about the calendar, how tight it is with a lot of tournaments, tournaments of two weeks, and then making excuses with exhibitions,” said Alcaraz. "It's a different format, different situation playing exhibitions than the official tournaments, 15, 16 days in row, having such a high focus and demanding physically. We're just having fun for one or two days and playing some tennis, and that's great, and why we choose the exhibitions. I understand [the criticism], but sometimes people don't understand us, our opinions. It's not really demanding mentally [compared with] when we're having such long events like two weeks or two and a half weeks."