"Be smarter with your schedule": Former French Open runner-up lambasts WTA players for complaining about hectic schedule

Former French Open finalist Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova has criticised women’s tennis players for deciding to play the Korea Open despite complaining about the long season. There has been a lot of debate in the recent past in the tennis world about players going through a tough schedule.

It has been repeatedly stated that players complain about having no time to recover, which in turn leads to fitness issues. One of the players who was very vocal about this was the world number two, Iga Swiatek. The six-time Grand Slam winner, in 2024, spoke about the challenges of a tough schedule.

“Well, it would be easy to fix it for people that are in charge,” said Swiatek back then. “But they already made plenty of decisions and they promised so many things to tournaments, WTA, for example, that, you know, it would mean for them to change their mind, which is tricky, because it's business. But I think players are aware that this is crazy what's going on, and the schedule is really tough. I think it needs to be changed, because also, I think it's going to be better for fans. Because they're not going to see their favourite players, like, pull out or getting injured so much, I think.”

Swiatek once again reiterated her point of view this year, where she claimed that the schedule is ‘too intense’. Swiatek was of the point of view that players are finding it hard to maintain their schedule when, at times, they have to pick between playing for their rankings or representing their country in competitions such as the Billie Jean King Cup.

"The scheduling is super intense. It's too intense. There's no point for us to play over 20 tournaments in a year," said Swiatek back in June. "Sometimes we need to sacrifice playing for your country because we need to keep up with playing these WTA 500s, for example, because we're going to get a zero in the ranking. I think these kind of obligations and the rules about mandatory tournaments just put pressure on us. I think people would still watch tennis, maybe even more, if we played less tournaments. The quality would be better."

Now, former world number 11 Pavlyuchenkova has come out and criticised women’s tennis players for making bad calls regarding maintaining their fitness in a tight schedule. Pavlyuchenkova, who finished as the runner-up at the Roland Garros in 2021 after losing to the Czech Republic’s Barbora Krejcikova in the final, recently appeared as a guest on ‘Bolshe’ where she hit back at players for complaining about the demanding schedule and still playing competitions such as the Korea Open. Pavlyuchenkova urged the fellow women players to make a wise call.

“All the girls are complaining and groaning in the changing rooms, ‘What a [long] season’, and then I see everyone is already in Korea,” said Pavlyuchenkova. “They’re already starting to play. I think… You literally just complained about the season, and now you’ve already flown away. Why? Be smarter with your schedule, right? Yet everyone still plays.”

Pavlyuchenkova further went on to talk about how difficult it was for her to play in the competitions in Asia towards the back end of the year. “It’s difficult for me, and it’s not even a matter of age at all, because when I was 25 or 26, it was still hard for me. You fly in from America, adapt both in time and conditions,” she said. “There are different balls at each tournament. In Beijing, for example, I think it was Penn, in Tokyo, Srixon, and in Hong Kong, there were Wilson balls.”

Interestingly, the top-seeded player in Korea will be Swiatek. She will be playing in her first competition after losing in the quarterfinal of the US Open to America’s Amanda Anisimova. Swiatek has been a direct entry into the second round, where she will face the winner of the match between Sorana Cirstea and Anastasia Zakharova.