Another week of fall tennis, another week of bulletins from the enervated and limping players at the the top of the sport.
Fresh off winning the China Open, her second WTA 1000 title of the season, Amanda Anisimova announced that she would skip the next tournament, the Wuhan Open, which had already started when Anisimova beat Linda Nosková in a compelling final in Beijing.
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka returned to the tour in Wuhan after missing the China Open with an injury. She was no worse for the wear standings-wise, since the world No. 2 Iga Świątek spurned the chance to put pressure on Sabalenka in the race for year-end No. 1. In Beijing, Świątek lost 6-0 in the deciding set of her match against Emma Navarro of the U.S., days after saying in a news conference that she might have to skip mandatory events to stay in the upper echelons of tennis for as long as she wants.
On the ATP Tour, world No. 2 Jannik Sinner retired from his third-round match against Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands at the Shanghai Masters, after suffering debilitating cramps in swelteringly hot and humid conditions. The exit left Sinner a long way behind Carlos Alcaraz in that race for the year-end No. 1.
Alcaraz isnt competing all that hard in that race either. He opted to skip the Shanghai event, which is the seasons penultimate ATP Masters 1000 tournament, the mens equivalent of the womens tournaments in Beijing and Wuhan.
Sports seasons are supposed to follow a rhythm and a pattern. Like a teapot on a slow boil, they are supposed to heat up gradually over many months, riding a rising tension that reaches its crescendo in its final weeks, as players or teams slug it out for that last jewel.
Thats not happening so much in tennis these days.
Instead of closely fought fights for the top ranking, there are Daniil Medvedev and Learner Tien, playing out a hypnotic, scintillatingly distressing third instalment of the most unlikely and compelling rivalry in the sport right now at the Shanghai Masters. Medvedev led by a set and 3-1 with two break points on Tiens serve. Then he talked himself into losing the set, cramping along the way, just like at the China Open in Beijing.
That time, Tien won when he should not have done. This time, Medvedev won when he should have, and then should not, before putting Tien on the same level of Alcaraz and Sinner in a fever dream of a post-match news conference, in which he laid bare the sporting trauma a teenager from California with massaging groundstrokes can inflict on a tentacular Russian.
The final two months of a nearly 11-month season have evolved into a war of attrition for top and middle-rung players, something they try to endure like the last miles of an ultramarathon.
WTA rules require players of sufficient ranking to enter a minimum of 16 tournaments each season: the 10 WTA 1000 events and six of its 500-level tournaments. The men must play eight of the nine ATP Masters 1000s, and four 500-level tournaments. Over the past few years, five of the ATP and WTA 1000s, which used to be one week long, have been extended to 12 days.
The tours say this has increased player prize money and improved infrastructure. The players agree. They also say it has compromised the feasibility of the season and turned the final weeks into a limping, slogging mess.
There are a lot of injuries, Świątek said in Beijing. It is because the season is too long and too intense. The day Świątek spoke, five of 12 matches across the ATP and WTA events there ended in retirements.
The WTA schedule requires players to play back-to-back 1000-level events in February, in Doha and Dubai; in March, in Indian Wells, Calif. and Miami; in April and May in Madrid and Rome; in August in Toronto or Montreal and Cincinnati, and in September and October in Beijing and Wuhan.
In a statement on Wednesday, the WTA said athlete welfare is a top priority.
After full consultation with representatives of players and tournaments, we made improvements to our circuit structure in 2024, and these have helped to achieve increases in both athlete compensation and fan engagement, it said, adding that its mandatory rules provide tournament owners with the security of a critical mass of top players. In turn, it says, that brings a $400 million increase in player compensation over the next 10 years.
As always, we continue to keep our Tour structure under review based on feedback from our members and fans, while recognizing that the holistic review of the calendar requires coordination across governing bodies, the statement said. The ATP and WTA remain in talks over a merger into one commercial entity, though both WTA Ventures chief executive Marina Storti and ATP Tour chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said no agreement is close at a summit in England last month.
For now, a cavalcade of players are ending their seasons early. On Monday, Daria Kasatkina of Australia, the world No. 19, announced that she had played her last match until 2026.
Ive hit a wall and cant continue, Kasatkina wrote. I need a break. A break from the monotonous daily grind of life on the tour, the suitcases, the results, the pressure, the same faces (sorry, girls), everything that comes with this life.
The schedule is too much, mentally and emotionally, she added. I am at breaking point and sadly, I am not alone.
In September, Elina Svitolina, the world No. 13, said she was calling it quits. Days later, Paula Badosa, who has been managing recurring hip and back injuries while making her way back toward the top 10, announced she was finished for the season. Frances Tiafoe, the American star who has lost five consecutive matches, withdrew on Wednesday from all remaining tournaments this season. Tiafoe has often struggled with motivation during the final two months of the season, but he desperately needed some wins down the stretch to lock down a seeded position at the Australian Open in January.
A spokesperson for the ATP pointed to a recent Q&A that Gaudenzi conducted with a staffer in August.
Gaudenzi, too, said the expanded 1000-level events have driven more money to the players. There is a bonus pool for the top performers at those events, as well as the general increases in prize money that constitute the payoff for the additional 15-plus days required to go deep at seven events that are nearly two weeks instead of one.
With the right foundations in place expanded formats, stronger event infrastructure were unlocking new levels of investment, Gaudenzi said. Big reforms take time, and we need patience. But Im confident the long-term growth theyll deliver will benefit everyone in the sport.
Perhaps, but players have short careers. Their priorities for making the most of a decade of prime athletic performance are far different from the organizations trying to build on a far longer horizon. And those players have been voicing their opinions with their feet.
Alcaraz and Sinner both skipped the Canadian Open in August, to the dismay of its organizers. In spring and early summer, Alcaraz had won the Monte Carlo Masters, the Italian Open, the French Open and Queens. He made the final at the Barcelona Open and at Wimbledon. After skipping the Canadian Open, he won the U.S. Open, played the Laver Cup and won the Japan Open in Tokyo despite rolling his ankle in his opening match. Then he pulled out of the Shanghai Masters, a decision that has looked even better with every passing day of stifling tennis.
Ive been struggling with some physical issues and, after discussing with my team, we believe the best decision is to rest and recover, said Alcaraz, whose absence will cost him 75 percent of the millions of dollars in bonuses he was set to receive for his results at the 1,000-level events and ATP Tour Finals.
Sinner, who had three months off in winter and early spring while serving an anti-doping suspension, won Wimbledon and returned at the Cincinnati Open. Alcaraz played too. Sinner retired down 5-0 in the final against the Spaniard with illness.
Novak Djokovic, who is set to be world No. 3 at the start of 2026, has been skipping Masters 1000 events for years now, making it clear he only really cares about winning Grand Slams and playing for his country. Hes in Shanghai, where he is playing his first non-Grand Slam event since May, though not necessarily because hes gunning for a high seeding at the Tour Finals in November. He skipped it last year.
Sponsors, such as Djokovics clothing brand Lacoste, generally like their players to appear in China to connect them with the worlds second-largest economy and its 1.4 billion citizens.
Ultimately, Djokovic said in a news conference in Shanghai, tennis is an individual sport. Players have to make choices about where and how they want to earn their money. Some of those choices come with financial consequences, like missing out on the year-end bonus pool.
Its the choice that you are willing to make if you want to play less, Djokovic said.
That said, the choices and their consequences are different for the top players than they are for everyone else.
Djokovic, Sinner and Alcaraz, along with Taylor Fritz, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Alexander Zverev, are all also scheduled to play in the Six King Slam, a $13.5 million exhibition event, in Riyadh later this month. Most mens players do not get opportunities to make up for lost income so easily, and there is no equivalent, or even close to it, for WTA Tour players.
So on they play, proving that while tennis may be fumbling the rising action of its final act, the tournaments between now and the end of the season remain valuable to fans and to the people who play in them. Not everyone is blowing them off, either literally or psychologically. There are titles to be won, prize money to be earned and rankings milestones to be achieved and at this time of year, a top-five or top-10 player is more vulnerable to an upset than they might be earlier in the season.
For the spectators in Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and Wuhan, they get to see the players they love who spend most of the year playing while they are asleep. They greet them with witty nicknames infused with deep knowledge of the sport and some of the best fan signs of any sporting event anywhere.
For the players, there is opportunity for history. Valentin Vacherot, the Monégasque world No. 204, is in the Shanghai Masters quarterfinals, his first last-eight appearance at the ATP Tour level. Jasmine Paolini and Elena Rybakina are fighting for the last WTA Tour Finals spot; players on both tours in the 30s and 40s are hunting for Australian Open seedings. Daniil Medvedev and Learner Tien have continued their hypnotic rivalry. And players up and down the rankings who have seen their seasons chopped up by injury are excited for court time and match practice in whatever form it comes.
Ben Shelton suffered a serious shoulder injury in the fourth round of the U.S. Open against Adrian Mannarino. At the time, he described it as the worst pain he had ever felt. He retired from a match for the first time in his career, then returned to Florida for rehab.
He flew from Florida to Shanghai to test out his shoulder, and not unsurprisingly lost his first match to David Goffin. Shelton will likely play a couple more events over the next month, ahead of what promises to be his first ATP Tour Finals appearance.
Sebastian Korda missed several months this season with a stress fracture in his shin. His ranking has dropped to No. 63. But hes healthy now, trying to end the season by climbing back up the ladder. He played six matches at three tournaments in two countries in less than two weeks, before heading to Europe to train ahead of the indoor hard-court swing there.
Ive played more matches than I played in the last six months, he said during an interview from Prague earlier this week. It was great.
Coco Gauff, the world No. 3, is at the Wuhan Open. Last month in Beijing, Gauff said that she treats everything after the U.S. Open as prep for the next season, a kind of extended training block during which developing her game is far more important than results.
I dont want to say not care because obviously Im not playing a tournament and trying to lose or anything, Gauff said ahead of the China Open. But yeah, there is definitely a weight that you kind of just dont care in a way, especially when youve had like a good moment of the season.
Gauff won the French Open in June, her second Grand Slam, which she said has freed her up to tinker during the home stretch of the season while she tries to remake her serve and forehand. In Beijing, she ran into Anisimovas juggernaut run to the title and won three games in a bruising defeat. It wasnt a problem.
It feels, again, like a practice tournament, she said.
Dan Sheldon contributed reporting.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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