Carlos Alcaraz does not play like someone who has been out for four months. Returning to the US Open after recovering from a wrist injury, the Spaniard has reached the quarter-finals hitting with the same on-court magic that saw him win the Australian Open at the start of the year, and showing the game just how much he was missed in his absence. He has also arrived with a message.
‘In the future, I’m going to take some breaks, some long breaks,’ he said after beating Jaime Faria in the second round. ‘Maybe not for four months, but one month, two months, missing some tournaments, because it’s impossible to play them all.’
After knocking out Tommy Paul in the fourth round, he doubled down. No, he does not have an idea of his schedule next season, but what he is sure about is taking breaks. ‘I just really want to take care of my mental health and my body,’ he added, to have a career built to last.
This is not a recent issue. In 2024, Alcaraz pointed out that ‘this schedule is going to kill us’. But having now felt the benefit of an enforced break, Alcaraz has turned evangelist, and provided the ATP tour with an almighty headache.
Tennis never stops. The moment a player loses at one tournament, they can catch a plane to somewhere else and pick up their racquet if so inclined. This week, there are men’s matches ongoing in destinations as far-flung as Genoa, Shanghai, Cassis, and Phan Thiet, Vietnam. But at the very top of the game, recent years have seen the elongation of all but two of the Masters 1000 tournaments from one week to more than 12 days.
While one side of the argument is that more time is afforded to players between matches, with the format closer to the two-week Grand Slams, many players feel that the longer they stay in the draw, the longer they stay in tournament mode. Factor in the 250 and 500 events, and the all-important majors, and a top-30 player can find themselves booked-up from January to mid-November.
Carlos Alcaraz’s plan to miss tournaments in the future to protect his body has raised a powerful point over the tour’s cluttered schedule
With lengthened events have come significant riches. Increased revenue for the tournaments, and increased prize money for the players who feature in them. But there’s a catch – eight of the nine Masters are mandatory, as is playing four 500 events. The punishment is designed to hit where it hurts, with docked ranking points, and a reduction of the share they receive from the tour’s end-of-year bonus for top stars.
Frustration with the schedule is not exclusive to Alcaraz. Cincinnati Open winner Arthur Fils said in April during the expanded 12-day Madrid Open that he ‘always prefers week-long tournaments’, and claimed that the remaining – non-mandatory Monte-Carlo, and Paris – are the ones ‘everyone loves’.
22-year-old Fils is world No11 and has the explosive, watchable game style fans believe make him one of the few contenders to break the Jannik Sinner-Alcaraz duopoly – if only he can stay on-court. In the past year alone, he has struggled with stress fractures to his back and hip. The more cluttered the schedule, the more playing on is incentivised, the more injuries. It’s already telling – across the men’s and women’s singles events, there were 24 withdrawals on the eve of the US Open.
Alcaraz shares the as the sport’s reigning superstar with Sinner, but there’s not touching him as the tour’s most charismatic figure. Having broken with his fellow stars pursuing a greater prize money share ahead of the US Open, the ATP should now fear the power he might have as the figurehead of a movement to change tennis’ unendurable schedule.
‘I just want to step on the court, have joy, have fun on the court,’ Alcaraz said on Friday. ‘Sometimes playing such a long season or playing a lot of tournaments week after week, I feel like I’m not playing with joy, I don’t have fun on the court.
‘I just want to miss tennis sometimes.’
