Carlos Alcaraz said players are misunderstood about their participation in exhibition events like the Six Kings Slam which takes place this week in Saudi Arabia.
On the one hand Alcaraz seemed to criticise the schedule last week in Shanghai.
Here’s is Carlos Alcaraz interview transcript from the Six King’s Slam
A lot of players are talking about the calendar, how tight it is with a lot of tournaments, tournaments of two weeks, and then making excuses with exhibitions.
“It’s a different format, different situation playing exhibitions than the official tournaments, 15, 16 days in row, having such a high focus and demanding physically.
“We’re just having fun for one or two days and playing some tennis, and that’s great, and why we choose the exhibitions.
“I understand [the criticism], but sometimes people don’t understand us, our opinions. It’s not really demanding mentally [compared with] when we’re having such long events like two weeks or two and a half weeks.”
If we take each part at a time. Players are talking about the demands on their schedule. This issue has never gone away. The 11 month season that is the ATP tour is a money maker. Players want to play the biggest events on top of the slams to ensure the biggest pay packets and ranking points.
This chaotic calendar is a case of having too many tournaments, too many organisations wanting a piece of the pie. There can be no doubt that being on tour is physically and mentally draining. Players are well paid for it though and until they say no, until they stop accepting payment then they really dont have a leg to stand on.
Bigger injustice distribution of wealth.
The top top players In the world are well remunerated for what they do. The trouble is outside the top 100, tennis players find it extremely difficult to make a living due to the ill distribution of prize money. It has been pointing out many times before that the tennis exodustem isn’t sustainable or just. There are simply no reasons why we cannot distribute the prize money more fairly to all tournaments on the tour.
Alcaraz mentions the different format suiting players better. 3 matches, big payments for appearances and a huge winner takes all cheques. This is versus a Masters 1000 event perhaps lasting 2 weeks plus the practice tom3 pre tournament. If we can read through his words, Carlos Alcaraz is basically saying he is paid significantly better than the regular tour. Is this hypocrisy? Tennis 365 says it is. The players are lining their own pockets, easy money from a few matches in a country with an appalling human rights record.
Demands of an exhibition
A 4 day tennis exhibition is significantly less of a mental and physical toll than a regular tournament. But let’s remember this, the regular tour is how these players made their name. Exhibitions have always been part of the tennis tour. They can coexist together but dont necessarily help develop.
The tennis podcast note that Alcaraz was paid a massive appearance fee for Laver Cup, Tokyo and missed out on Beijing due to the relatively poor appearance money offering. Can you blame Carlos Alcaraz for taking the money? I guess you can’t. He is box office, sells tickets, rackets and puts bums on seats.