The Canadian Open has been on the end of some heavy criticism at this year’s tournament.

There have been numerous big name withdrawals from this year’s tournament, with Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz pulling out of the men’s Canadian Open event, while Aryna Sabalenka elected to skip the WTA tournament.

This is not the only criticism that the event has received, with Frances Tiafoe calling the Canadian Open ‘garbage’ for something that has changed this year.

While Alexander Zverev has spoken about the conditions at the Canadian Open and has called them ‘ridiculous’.

Now, both tournament directors of the Canadian Open have answered these critics and revealed if they plan to make changes.

A general view of centre court between Marie Bouzkova of Czechia and Victoria Mboko of Canada during their third round match on Day Five of the WTA 1000 National Bank Open at IGA Stadium.Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty ImagesTournament director of WTA Canadian Open responds to criticism

For the first time this year the Canadian Open is taking place over 12 days, and will actually hold its finals on a Thursday, instead of the traditional Sunday.

The Cincinnati Open is also taking place over 12 days this year, meaning that the Canadian Open has been brought forward.

This gave just two weeks between the conclusion of Wimbledon and the start of the Canadian Open, something that is being suggested has caused more withdrawals for the ATP/WTA events.

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Now, former player and tournament director of the women’s Canadian Open event, Valerie Tetreault, has spoken in a press conference about the issues that have been present this year.

Tetreault confirmed that there is currently no plan to alternate the Canadian Open and Cincinnati Open at the moment, but suggested that she does expect there to be less withdrawals in 2026 as there will be an extra week between Wimbledon.

“On the first question, it’s not part of any discussion right now, you know, the possibility of alternating between Cincinnati and Canada in terms of the weeks in the calendar,” said Tetreault.

“That being said, I do think that this year we were probably more impacted because of the two weeks in between Wimbledon and our tournament.

“The good news is that 2026 and 2027 will be what we call the long summer calendar. So we’ll have an extra week, so there will be, again, three weeks in between Wimbledon and the National Bank Open. I do think that will make a difference.

“I think it allows basically anyone who goes pretty deep at Wimbledon to still have somewhere close to a week to take some time off and recover before they can start thinking again about the hard court season. So I think, unfortunately, this year was clearly not ideal.

“I’m a little bit relieved that in Montreal we weren’t too impacted. I think in the end, there’s only Aryna Sabalenka really who made the choice to skip Montreal to have a little bit extra time. The other players who weren’t here, it was mostly for longer-term injuries and nothing that had to do of a choice of playing or not Montreal.”

What has the ATP Canadian Open tournament director said about withdrawals?

Sabalenka was the only seeded player to withdraw from the women’s event in Canada this year not due to injury.

However, the men’s tournament saw seven seeded players withdraw including Sinner and Alcaraz, which tournament director of the men’s Canadian Open, Karl Hale, has admitted he was ‘disappointed’ about.

Hale does appear to have faith in the new 12-day Masters 1000 events, and revealed that he would be speaking to ATP CEO Andrea Gaudenzi in Toronto.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a really good question,” Hale said in his press conference. “The good news is that Sunday was sold out, and nobody knew who the matchups were. So tennis is doing extremely well in this marketplace.

“We are obviously disappointed in the withdrawals, but we’ve spoken to the players. We have spoken to the tour, Andrea, the CEO of ATP, is coming this week, so we’ll have discussions with him about how to improve situation.

“It’s a new 12-day model, so we’ll work through the process, but we’re very happy with it to date, and we’ll continue growing as we move along.”

The Canadian Open is now moving into its latter stages, with the finals day taking place on Thursday, August 7, before Cincinnati will take over.

Sinner, Alcaraz, Djokovic and Sabalenka all still remain in the draws for the Cincinnati Open, with the Canadian Open mostly impacted by the extension of 1000 level events to 12 days.