Alcaraz criticises ATP calendar after Sinner’s injury: “They push us too much”
Carlos Alcaraz has linked the growing number of injuries in tennis to the ATP’s overloaded calendar, after Jannik Sinner ended his season early. The Spaniard says he will take longer breaks in the future and start skipping some tournaments.
Speaking to TNT Sports ahead of the Shanghai Masters, the world No. 3 urged tennis authorities to listen to the players. “One of the reasons we see players getting injured is that they push us too much, sometimes beyond the limit, to play a lot of tournaments and a lot of matches. I think we’re going in the wrong direction,” Alcaraz said, wishing Sinner all the best in his recovery.
The Spaniard added that he will start missing events, even mandatory ones: “In the future, I will take longer breaks. Maybe not four months, but one or two, and I’ll start skipping some tournaments, because it’s impossible to play them all. If they don’t do anything about it, we’ll see more and more of these cases.”
Sinner has not played an official match since July, when he won Wimbledon by beating Alexander Zverev in the final. A right knee tendinopathy ruled him out of the entire North American hard-court swing, including the US Open, as well as Beijing. After renewed discomfort during training in Monte Carlo, he opted for conservative treatment without surgery, meaning he will miss both the ATP Finals in Turin and the Davis Cup Finals.
Alcaraz himself has had a tough year, missing four and a half months between April and August with a wrist injury sustained in Barcelona. He returned at the US Open, losing to Ben Shelton in the quarter-finals, then successfully defended his title in Tokyo, beating Jiří Lehečka 7-6 (4), 6-4 in the final. Before his Shanghai opener against Juan Manuel Cerúndolo, the 23-year-old said he felt mentally fresh and physically recovered.
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