Sinner withdraws from Paris Masters due to exhaustion

France A scheduling issue forced world number four Jannik Sinner to withdraw from his Paris Masters third-round match against Alex De Minaur.

The latest match of the second round between Sinner and Mackenzie McDonald ended at 2:17 a.m. on November 2, Paris time. According to the organizers' schedule, in the third round, Sinner had to play the fourth match in the session on November 2, instead of being scheduled to play in the evening session. The match between Sinner and De Minaur was scheduled to take place at 5:00 p.m., meaning the Italian player had just over 14 hours of rest between the two rounds.

"I had to make the right decision for my health and my body," Sinner said. "I left the press conference after the second round match at 3am and didn't sleep for a few hours. I had less than 12 hours to recover and prepare for the next match."

Sinner greets the crowd after his victory over Mackenzie McDonald on November 2. Photo: AP

After each match, players have to attend a press conference, do recovery exercises, shower, and then go back to the hotel. Sinner is in a difficult position due to the unreasonable scheduling of the organizers. While Sinner was assigned to play the evening session in the second round and the day session in the third round, Novak Djokovic was assigned to play the evening session in the third round despite having played the day session in the second round. This leads to a big difference in rest time between the two championship candidates.

Casper Ruud, the eighth seed of the tournament and eliminated in the second round, reacted strongly on social network X: "Well done ATP! Giving one of the best players in the world 14.5 hours to recover and be ready for the next match. What a joke."

The Paris Masters is packed into a week, with six matches each day in the outer rounds on Centre Court. This makes the late end of the day like Sinner's not the only case. In the first round on October 30, Dominic Thiem defeated Stan Wawrinka at 2:23 am.

Most ATP tournaments have seen this, as the evening session typically sells twice as many tickets as the day session. In Beijing last month, Alexander Zverev beat Alejandro Davidovich Fokina at 2:41 a.m. In the first round of the 2023 US Open, Djokovic started his match against Alexandre Muller at 11:05 p.m. but finished early, winning 3-0. Carlos Alcaraz also finished his match at 1 a.m., after beating Jordan Thompson in Cincinnati.

The above list includes many matches at the Madrid Open, Rome Masters, Australian Open or Roland Garros... Among the major events, only Wimbledon has a rule that matches cannot be played after 11pm, local time. The harsh schedule and sometimes the delay in announcing the schedule, the change in balls, the way prize money is divided,... are the issues that make tennis players often criticize the ATP and gradually create revolutions.

Vy Anh

Source link