The Debate Over a Shorter Professional Tennis Season

Novak Djokovic was able to win the US Open for the first time in his career, adding to his first Wimbledon win and extending his tremendous season. Currently, he holds the title to 3 of the 4 majors and has won 7 other tournaments. His record to date is 64-3 with his most recent loss coming from an injury retirement against Juan Martin Del Potro in the Davis Cup semi-finals. The Davis Cup match was played less than a week after the US Open final where Djokovic won a battle over Nadal in four sets that lasted over 4 hours. During this match, Djokovic struggled with tightening back muscles and seemed to go for broke with his shots in order to shorten rallies. Until then, it was remarkable that Djokovic had been able to sustain his level of play since the beginning of the season which started all the way back in January at the Australian Open. But the stress of the season was shown at the Davis Cup semi-finals when he could not continue playing and had to be helped off the court.

Since the US Open concerns have been raised over the high number of retirements at the US Open and the crammed schedule in New York. Several top players, including Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Roddick have talked about going on strike to push through changes to the sport's exhausting calendar. These four players alone have the clout to pull in spectator, sponsor, and promoter dollars and the threat of a strike would surely force the hand of the ATP. Currently, a condition of entry to the ATP Tour is that every player must compete in the four Grand Slams, eight Masters 1000 events, and the ATP Finals if a player qualifies. A player's ranking is made up of 18 tournaments and his best four results from ATP 500-level tournaments (one of which must follow the U.S. Open) and the best two results from ATP 250-level, Challenger or Futures tournaments.. Those 17 commitments mean about 20 weeks a year of competitive playing time, with many more weeks of travelling, preparation and training. As an example, Nadal has played more than 75 matches in the nine months of this season alone, equating to over 1,800 games in competitions. At the Open this year, a record number of players could not push their bodies through the first week. Fourteen players retired from matches because of injuries and another four withdrew before their matches began. For years, players have complained that the season is too long because it does not give them enough time to recover from injuries or recharge.

Tennis players do, however, have a bigger say in what goes on than in any other major sport than golf. They hold a 50% share of the ATP, with the other 50% held by the promoters. Federer and Nadal are, respectively, the president and vice-president of the player council, the 12-man board that feeds their views to the ATP's board. The ATP Tour was formed as an equal partnership between players and tournaments deliberately so that players have a major voice in how the game is run. The difficulty for the ATP is that it must balance the concerns of the big-name players with the financial requirements of their counterparts across the net. Tennis faces a dilemma similar to many sports. There are a small number of sporting and financial powers whose participation drives the revenues of the entire game. Yet, the health and well-being of the players should be priority.

Andy Murray has committed to take part in talks at the Shanghai Masters in early October, when the players will discuss what can be done to reduce the amount of tournaments they are expected to play. It will be interesting to see how these issues are handled during their meetings.