How much tennis is too much tennis?
Unsustainable scheduling, WTA/ATP Tour mandates, the ‘hamster wheel’, a reduction in player autonomy
There’s been some discussion in the media this week about WTA and ATP Tour scheduling, following the comments made by Iga Świątek after her win against Mirra Andreeva in the Cincinnati semi-finals:
“I’ve been kind of an advocate saying that (they) shouldn’t be pushing and pushing for us to play more… Obviously, it’s not our decision, but I think we have too many tournaments in the season. It’s not going to end well. It makes tennis less fun for us… it’s pretty exhausting… Sometimes I feel like I’m this hamster in a wheel running to the next tournament.”
These comments echo a common sentiment among players on the WTA and ATP Tours – the current state of tennis scheduling is unsustainable. The schedule is both inflexible and taxing, and it’s been getting worse over time.
Let’s take a deeper look into the current state of tennis scheduling, and the implications it has for players.
Mandatory tournament participation requirements for WTA and ATP Tour
For top players (like Iga Świątek), who are ranked in the Top 30 on the WTA or ATP Tour in the previous year, there are mandatory tournament participation requirements.
Notably, the WTA Tour has undergone a big change this year, with the number of mandatory WTA 1000 tournaments rising from 4 to 10:
For the ATP Tour, there are 9 Masters 1000 tournaments – 8 of which are mandatory (only Monte Carlo is not).
But it’s not just ATP/WTA 1000 tournaments that have mandatory requirements. These requirements also apply to ATP/WTA 500 tournaments too – a top 30 ranked player must play 6 or 7 of these tournaments over the course of the season. Throw in four grand slams and ATP/WTA Finals (if eligible), and a top 30 player in the ATP or WTA Tour is obligated to play a lot of tennis over the course of a year:
The numbers behind Iga Świątek’s tennis schedule
In light of Świątek’s recent comments, and in the knowledge that she is one of the best players on the WTA Tour, let’s explore some of the statistics behind Iga Świątek’s workload in 2023 and 2024 (so far).
In 2023, Świątek played a total of 79 matches – the most across the entire WTA Tour. This is not completely surprising, as she advances deep in nearly all of the tournaments that she plays. But it’s a good example of the workload that a top player in the women’s game must go through over the course of a year.
Of these 79 matches, she was on court for an average of 1 hour and 35 minutes. This means that the total time she spent on court in 2023 – just solely on court – was just shy of 125 hours. It’s absurd.
And this was before the introduction of the 10 mandatory WTA 1000 tournaments. Add the Olympics into the mix, and the numbers are tracking in a similar (if not worse) direction for Świątek in 2024. Here's the stats below:
Note: The men are getting through their fair share of tennis too – Medvedev and Sinner exceeded 80 matches played in 2023 and are playing best-of-5 in the Grand Slams, further inflating their time spent out on court.
The burden of a busy tennis schedule
Travel
The global nature of tennis necessitates travel. However, the top players are travelling a lot.
As a bit of experiment, I went through and collated all of the tournaments that Świątek played in 2023, including the tournament’s location, how many days Świątek had between tournaments, and the approximate travel distance across cities.
I’ve estimated (approximately!) that Świątek travelled somewhere in the region of 77,000km in 2023 alone. For reference, the circumference of the Earth is 40,075km. So over 12 months, Świątek travelled enough to nearly circle the globe twice.
Travelling this frequently across the world is not only extremely taxing, but expensive. Although Świątek will able to absorb these costs, it’s common knowledge that players on the fringes of the top 50-100 struggle to keep up with the extensive cost of travelling.
In 2023, Świątek:
Played an average of 4.4 matches per tournament
Had an average of 12.8 days from the last match she played at a tournament to the first match she played in the next tournament
Travelled an average (roughly) of 4290km per tournament for a total of over 77000km in a year
The ‘hamster wheel’ - injury/lack of rest
The intense tennis schedule bleeds into other areas of players’ lives too. As Świątek touched on with her “hamster wheel” comment, top players are trapped in a constant cycle of travelling, training and playing. It leaves little time for rest and recuperation, for true off-days – which in turn, increases the risk of injury for these athletes.1
As shown in the above table, there were some incredibly short tournament turnarounds for Świątek in 2023. In fact, nearly two-thirds (64%) had a turnaround period of 14 days or less:
35% (6/17 tournaments) had a turnaround of less than 7 days
29% (5/17 tournaments) had a turnaround of 7-14 days
A notable example is the 5-day turnaround for Świątek between Madrid and Rome – both of which are WTA 1000 tournaments.
It’s important to note that there are also other factors at play that can contribute to injuries, such as switching between surfaces and even tennis balls (see here for example), but having a jam-packed schedule is simply not doing the players any favours.
Lack of player autonomy
Another large drawback is that the ATP and WTA mandatory tournament requirements leave little room for player autonomy. Players have effectively lost the flexibility to pick and choose the tournaments that they play in. They are being dictated to.
A broader question then comes to mind: will players lose their passion for the game if they are both constantly playing and have little choice in the tournaments they play?
It’s a discussion that has only been tentatively broached by players on tour, but Elena Rybakina commented more directly on the tennis schedule and mandatory tournament requirements last year in Madrid:
“It may make sense for Indian Wells and Miami to have that duration, but to do it in these two events [Madrid and Rome], shortly before Roland Garros… with the new rules there is no room to choose, we are forced to compete in too many tournaments.”
Where to from here?
There’s no simple solution. As sponsorship and TV/streaming rights continue to flourish, there is little incentive for the WTA and ATP Tours to change their current approach to scheduling.
These bodies have a strong supporting argument for increasing the number of mandatory tournaments – the prize money available to players is increasing. Just this year, the WTA secured an increase of $400 million (over the next 10 years) in prize money on the back of these deals.
Herein lies the issue – for tennis players to earn more prize money, there needs to be an increase in sponsorship and TV revenue from tournaments. However, to attract this additional revenue, the top players need to feature at these tournaments, and so making tournaments mandatory is a sure-fire way to ensure participation. Therefore, a tension exists between improving prize money and reducing the intensity of the tennis schedule. The two aren’t mutually exclusive – there is a balance (however tenuous it might be) to be struck, but right now, increasing prize money appears to be taking precedence across both the tours. It’s an approach that can’t last forever.
I’d love to be able to quantify the number of injuries on the WTA and ATP Tours, particularly over time, but injury data is fairly scarce and fragmented at present.
Interesting data and great stats. Such an exhaustive and daunting schedule for old and new players alike.