Stefanos Tsitsipas slams ATP bosses for ‘backwards move’ in scathing rant | Tennis | Sport
Stefanos Tsitsipas has launched a scathing attack on the new two-week Masters 1000 format after ending his 2024 season.
The world No. 12 finished his year at the Paris Masters – one of the few remaining one-week Masters tournaments.
After Andy Roddick ridiculed the “stupid” extended format of the top-tier ATP events, Tsitsipas piled on the criticism and claimed it was a “backwards move”.
The two-week Masters 1000s have been a massive point of contention this year as several premier tournaments had their original one-week schedule extended.
This year, the joint ATP-WTA 1000-point events in Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid and Rome were staged over two weeks, as was the ATP-only Shanghai Masters. And from 2026, the Canadian Open and the Cincinnati Open will also be played over a longer time period.
While it allows organisers to increase the draw sizes to let lower-ranked players compete and helps them sell more tickets to bank more money, the players haven’t been happy with the change. And Tsitsipas became the latest star to speak out in a brutal rant.
“The two-week Masters 1000s have turned into a drag,” he wrote. “The quality has definitely dropped.
“Players aren’t getting the recovery or training time they need, with constant matches and no space for the intense work off the court.”
After reaching the quarter-final at last week’s Paris Masters, the Greek star pointed out that the one-week set-up worked a lot better.
He continued: “It’s ironic that the @atptour committed to this format without knowing if it could actually improve the schedule, but the quality likewise. Paris got it right, done in a week. Exciting and easy to follow. Just how it’s supposed to be.
“If the goal was to ease the calendar, extending every 1000 to two weeks is a backwards move. Sometimes, it feels like they’re fixing what wasn’t broken.”
Tsitsipas made the stinging comments after hearing Andy Roddick slam the two-week tournaments on his podcast, Served. “The two-weeks 1000s are so stupid,” the retired American ace said.
“They’re so stupid. They’re so dumb. It’s the worst. I hate it. Feel like more people got injured because you can’t do the work on off-weeks to build your body up physically.
“If you’re playing every other day, you can’t go and do the intense work. The players are this. The feedback has been s***. Maybe you shouldn’t have committed the calendar to a long-term vision of something that is not proven.”
And the former world No. 1 agreed that the Paris Masters was the perfect example of why one-week events were superior. Roddick added: “And Paris was great. We finished in a week, it was fantastic.
“All we’re trying to do is create some elbow room for the schedule and what do we do? ‘Let’s make all the Masters 1000s two weeks.’ Oh, that’ll help the calendar. Actions speak louder than words. There are no s*** given about length of schedule.”
