Woodbridge: Is the ATP season too long?

After Novak Djokovic called time on the rest of his season, I read some commentators questioning the length of the ATP Tour. In my opinion, there should be a mandatory 6-8 weeks off at the end of every season.

Saying that, the players and their agents are their own worst enemies. What happens – and has been happening since the start of time – is that whenever there is a spare week on the calendar someone will put on an exhibition event, or there will be a Davis Cup final or something.

The players want to take a break but they don’t because the money carrot that gets dangled is too much to turn down. So they keep playing, and they increase their potential for fatigue and injury.

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It’s also important to understand that a player in the Top 100, who perhaps hasn’t had the best end to their season, might say ‘I haven’t played, my ranking has dropped and I want play some Challengers and get my match play up to get some confidence back’.

If I put my player hat on, there were moments when I felt like that. But there were other seasons when I didn’t, and I would have felt restricted in my trade if I couldn’t play.

As a professional athlete, particularly in tennis, you only earn money when you win matches. You have to be able to sustain yourself on Tour and that means you need tournaments and places to play. When you don’t have that, you’re restricted in your ability to make a living. That’s why I don’t know what the solution is.

All of that said, I don’t think the length of the season has been the problem for Novak and Andy. Over the last 12 months – and much longer for Novak – their runs have been so strong, they were so dedicated, and they were playing at such a high level that they had to come down at some point. When you look at their performances, they were chasing dreams and goals that were within their grasp – they couldn’t stop.

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Their breakdown is because of over-exertion. It is like metal fatigue in an airplane – eventually if you don’t get in there and service it, it will break down. That is where there bodies and minds are at, and they have to take time and rejuvenate. We’ve seen what that has done for Roger and Rafa this year.

So at the end of it all, the Tour is too long for about five players. For the rest of the Tour, they need to be playing eleven months of the year.