ANALYSIS: Carlos Alcaraz complains about killing players through scheduling, but does he have a point or is it hypocrisy?

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are some of the best players in the world, but they don’t agree on all things.

One famous example of how they disagree is on the calendar, which became apparent recently after both made some comments on it. So unless you’ve been living under a rock, you likely would have noticed that Carlos Alcaraz has been beating the ‘calendar too much’ drum for a very long time. The Spaniard has emerged as one of the leading candidates in criticising the tennis calendar, finding it too much and too long.

He’s not the only one that has said things like that this year. This narrative has been going on for a very long time, with other notable players like Iga Swiatek talking about it for many years now. Alcaraz, though, seemingly started to speak more and more on it lately, which has caught the eye of both other players and media alike. It’s not the most unreasonable position because the calendar is indeed quite long and keeps expanding.

The reason for that is rather simple – money. It always comes down to money, and when money is involved, the health and safety of players go second. So while the argument presented by Alcaraz is a sound and noble one, it has flaws. It looks particularly weak from his POV when he signed up for the Laver Cup and also the Saudi exhibition later this year. Yes, there are indeed many events in the year, but you’re not making yourself look good arguing against that if you’re signing up for events you don’t have to play.

Alcaraz quote: “Probably they are going to kill us in some way. Right now a lot of good players are going to miss a lot of tournaments because of (injury).”

The long calendar is a problem and will create more and more problems, but Jannik Sinner had an interesting way of talking about it. The Italian was asked about the calendar and Alcaraz’s comments ahead of the China Open, and the Italian had a pretty simple response to all of that. While he acknowledged that the calendar is indeed long, the Italian also pointed out that players don’t have to play all the events.

There are some events that are mandatory, which all players who are able must attend, but outside of that, you’re given plenty of freedom to organise your calendar. Sinner, for example, has done exceptionally well this year in terms of his schedule. We can demonstrate that easily by simply comparing how many events and matches they played.