Tim Henman Has a Point: Are 12-Day Tournaments Breaking the Players?

Let’s be honest: nobody ever accused tennis officialdom of keeping things simple.

​Tim Henman has popped up to state the obvious—that stretching the big Masters 1000 tournaments out to a whopping 12 days is just too much tennis. As Henman bluntly put it: "The 12-day Masters 1000s is just too much tennis. That's too much time on the road and unfortunately we're seeing that with the number of players that are injured." 

Who could have guessed that dragging your bags around for nearly two weeks per event would leave everyone crocked?

Surprise, surprise: the current players completely agree. Carlos Alcaraz has spent more time chatting with physios than holding trophies lately, and he's not chuffed about it. Pointing out how brutal the modern game has become, Alcaraz warned: "It's impossible to play them all." Unsurprisingly, he's threatening to start skipping tournaments altogether. Shocking, I know, that human beings need a break.

Even players like Flavio Cobolli are pointing out the madness. You can spend a month away from home living out of a suitcase and still end up playing fewer than ten matches because the schedule is stretched so thin.

Over to you: Are the tennis bosses ruining the sport with these endless 12-day events, or are the players just whining? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!

TENN360 Takeaway:

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work this out. If the tennis bosses want the top stars actually showing up instead of pulling out with injuries every five minutes, they might want to listen to Henman. Shortening these events back down to a sensible length sounds like a radical idea, but it just might save the players from running themselves into the ground.

Cynthia White—News Editor, TENN360