The Association of Tennis Professionals is transforming the format of the ATP Masters 1000, moving them from one to two weeks: a format that many tennis players do not like, one of whom is Stefanos Tsitsipas. The Greek, through a post X in which he tagged a passage from the Served with Andy Roddick podcast, analyzed the issue, calling what ATP is doing a drag and, at the same time, praising the Paris Rolex Masters board for leaving the one week classic format unchanged.
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"The two-week ATP Masters 1000s have become a drag. The quality has definitely dropped. Players don't have the recovery or practice time they need, with constant matches and no time for intense off-court work. It's ironic that the ATP committed to this format without knowing if it could actually improve the schedule, but also the quality. Paris did the right thing, they did it in one week. Exciting and easy to follow. Just as it should be. If the goal was to lighten the schedule, extending every ATP Masters 1000 to two weeks is a step backwards. Sometimes, it feels like they're fixing what wasn't broken," he wrote.
A topic that Andy Roddick had already talked about, who had pointed out that longer tournaments have the effect of creating more wear and tear on the players, rather than offering a better show.
"Paris-Bercy was great: one week. It's great. All you have to do is open up the calendar and what do we do? We do the Masters 1000 over two weeks. Oh, that will help the calendar! I'm going to say bluntly that the two weeks of the Masters 1000 are so stupid. It's the worst thing. I hate it. There's a feeling that more players have gotten injured because you can't work in the off weeks to get stronger physically. If you play every other day you can't go and do intense work. The players say that. Maybe the calendar shouldn't have been used like that," he said.
