Last year there was a quarrel regarding the fact that players didn’t have much time to rest in between seasons.
Than there was the decision to shorten the calendar by a fortnight to pack many events at the end of the year. This was quite a controversial action.
The Olympic Disruption
Tennis players were already coming from another tour the force: the summer events.
The Olympic Games caused a big disruption among top players as they didn’t have time to prepare for the North American summer. So many skipped Canada (Federer and then Murray retired) and some played Cincinnati in bad shape (Djokovic reached the final… but he was so dead to be badly bagelled by Federer in the opening set).
The End Season mess
Then we had the end of the season. After the Asian swing, that debilitates many players because of different conditions and the time zone, there was only 1 week to rest for 3 back to back events: Basel/Valencia, Paris and the World Tour Finals.
So Roger couldn’t skip Basel (his tournament!) to miss Paris (that was a pity as he won it the previous year) in order to have better chances in London. Nole skipped Basel to still be tired for Paris. Andy retired from Basel to try to be at his best in Paris and London.
We miss something: a week in between Paris and London!
From Nole
“It is a big challenge,” Nole said . “Obviously I’m sure all the participants in London will agree that this is definitely not something that goes in the favour of us preparing for the most important event in the end of the year.”
“This is the schedule. It is the way it is. We have to adjust, we have to accept it,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is no other options at this moment.But we will discuss this matter after we finish this season. Maybe we can try to find some other way.
“This season is shorter by two weeks. Now we have a two weeks longer off-season. Maybe that was the sacrifice we had to make. There are still some options on the table about this [pre-London] week. Maybe we can move it around so we can make it more adjustable for the top players.”
What to do?
Easy… just put 1 week in between Paris and London!!!
