The Long Season

Professional tennis in the Fall has one recurring theme, the ongoing debate over the length of the tennis season. Players, the media, fans, everyone loves weighing in on this topic and invariably the constant theme is the tennis calendar is too long. However it does a disservice to simplify the debate without an objective and detailed understanding of all the opposing forces that have created this long-standing issue.

There are a few ways of looking at this. The most obvious is that if something should be a certain way, just get it done and make it happen. Unfortunately, much like in life, tennis is complicated, and sometimes what should happen on the surface has a zillion moving parts and if one is tweaked there is a ripple effect on many other parts of the system.

I'm sure we can all agree that tennis is an incredibly physical sport with the additional component of its international nature leading to excessive travel across multiple timezones. Players need ample time to regenerate both physically and mentally. How many times have you returned home from a two week road trip and felt you needed a few days to recover from living out of a suitcase? Now imagine 32 to 40 weeks on the road each year. Even if a player can carve out 6 weeks off at the end of the season, very little of that time can be used to completely detach from the sport because so much time is required to build a physical base for the upcoming season. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the main reason professional tennis is active 11 months a year is because of the demand for the product throughout the world. Tennis has prospered in regions like the Far East, South America, and Eastern Europe, creating more job opportunities for tennis players. The ATP WORLD TOUR has an obligation to all of its members, both players and tournaments alike, to create and foster job opportunities when possible. It is a difficult balance to moderate and one that obviously has a ways to go.

Fostering change in tennis is always a difficult proposition because of the many competing interests. Top players, who are carrying a disproportionate responsibility in the prosperity of the game, would certainly advocate a shorter schedule, thus creating more time to rest but also to allow more opportunity for lucrative “special events” like exhibitions where the work/reward ratio is tremendous. Lower ranked players will always push back against a shorter calendar, as they want the opportunity to play more and thus make more money.

We know one thing for sure, we want to encourage and foster an environment that enables and encourages our star players to stay active in the sport as long as possible. Hopefully we all can work together to find a balance that keeps both the players and sport healthy.

What do you think?

~ Justin