Anna Kalinskaya lashes out at WTA Tour chiefs after controversial scheduling move
This issue of tournament and match scheduling in tennis is rarely far from the surface in tennis and now Anna Kalinskaya has reopened the debate about an issue that will always spark a debate.
World No 34 Kalinskaya beat Ekaterina Alexandrova in the last-16 of the Cincinnati Open, with the match stretching into the early hours of the morning as she won 3-6, 7-6(5) 6-1 in a match that ended after 2.30am.
That meant the Russian player would not have gone to sleep at a natural time and she was back at the Cincinnati tennis centre to prepare for her quarter-final against Iga Swiatek a few hours later.
With her sleep pattern disturbed by the late finish against Alexandrova, a clearly disappointed Kalinskaya used her social media account to highlight her annoyance after it was confirmed she has an 11am start for her clash with Swiatek on Friday.
“How can the WTA and tournament expect athletes to perform their best when the scheduling is this unfair?” she asked.
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“After my match against Alexandrova, I got home from the site at 2:40am and didn’t go to bed until 4am. I slept a bit and came to the site to practice.
“Then I get scheduled at 11am for tomorrow’s match – how does the tournament and WTA expect me to recover and continuously adjust my sleep pattern, which is one of the most important aspects of recovery? Seems a bit one-sided.”
It was hard to argue with Kalinskaya’s argument and it backed up comments from Swiatek last year, who suggested the schedule the players are being asked to play is not good for their health.
“It would be easy to fix for people who are in charge, but they already made plenty of decisions and they promised so many things to tournaments, basically, I mean, WTA, for example, that it would mean for them to change their mind, which is tricky because it’s business,” she said.
“But I think players are aware that this is crazy what’s going on and the schedule is really tough.
“I spoke about it in Cincinnati, for example, and there are people saying that I don’t have to play so many tournaments. But truth to the fact is that we have so many mandatory tournaments that we literally need to show up and we don’t have time to work on stuff or live peacefully because from one tournament we’re going straight to another.
“We don’t even have time at the end of the year because literally the first tournament starts on the 29th of December. So yeah the season is for sure too long.
“I think it needs to be changed because also I think it’s going to be better for fans and because they’re not going to see their favourite players pulling out or getting injured so much, I think, and we can present better quality, I would say.”
The top players have a series of mandatory events that they are expected to play and they can only pull out if they cite an injury.
The huge prize money on offer may be seen as compensation for the strain they put on their bodies, but this discussion is set to run and run.
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