{"id":592702,"date":"2025-11-25T11:24:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T11:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/592702\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T11:24:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T11:24:14","slug":"laura-robson-speaks-out-as-tim-henman-slammed-for-comments-live-on-tv-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/592702\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Robson speaks out as Tim Henman slammed for comments live on TV | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" title=\"Laura Robson\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/laura-robson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Laura Robson<\/a> has defended her <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" title=\"Sky Sports\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/sky-sports\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sky Sports<\/a> colleague <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" title=\"Tim Henman\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/tim-henman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tim Henman<\/a> after the four-time <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" title=\"Wimbledon\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/wimbledon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wimbledon<\/a> semi-finalist claimed there is \u201ctoo much irrelevant tennis\u201d. Henman made his comments at the ATP Finals as the tennis season came to an end earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Henman enjoyed an established career in tennis as the Briton reached the semi-finals of the <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" title=\"French Open\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/french-open\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">French Open<\/a> and <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" title=\"US Open (Tennis)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/us-open\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">US Open<\/a> after his appearances in the last-four at the All England Club. He won the Paris Masters in 2003 and also appeared in two Indian Wells finals and one Cincinnati Masters showpiece match. But his remarks about the tennis calendar didn\u2019t go down well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, there is too much irrelevant tennis at times in the calendar,\u201d Henman explained. \u201cWhen they talk about February, historically on the ATP Tour there have been 12 tournaments in four weeks in February and what does that mean when you have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/jannik-sinner\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jannik Sinner<\/a> here, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/carlos-alcaraz\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> there, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/alexander-zverev\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alexander Zverev<\/a> here and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/novak-djokovic\" data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|AutoLink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Novak Djokovic<\/a> there?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t provide a clear narrative for the fan so certain weeks where there is no tennis is a good thing for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Two-time Grand Slam winner Yevgeny Kafelnikov responded as he wrote on X (formerly Twitter): \u201cYou mean, \u2018There is too much irrelevant exhibition tennis tournaments with lot of money, which has a negative effect on calendar\u2019 Tim.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the Briton was slammed by some fans on social media, with @Dangacheru exclaiming: \u201cWhat a load of rubbish. Scrap off the exhibitions first.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, @AgyaaniBaaba explained: \u201cPretty disappointing take\u2026 The \u2018irrelevant\u2019 tournaments provide opportunities to upcoming players to become relevant tomorrow and fans in a lot of places to be relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And @tc_carbonell penned: \u201cBad day in the office Tim. There\u2019s no irrelevant tennis\u2026we were all irrelevant before you get to the best tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Henman\u2019s comments came after <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/2134119\/ATP-Tour-chairman-Andrea-Gaudenzi-schedule-money\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi stated<\/a>: \u201cIt&#8217;s a difficult problem to solve because if a player is attracted by money and plays in a lower category, which happens often, if you look at the date and the behaviour of how they play, they often play a lot also in the lower categories, and they also play exhibitions outside of our system, and they play team events.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And Robson defended the former British No. 1 as she posted a clip of their interview to X and wrote: \u201cWould be great to post the 20 minute interview with Andrea Gaudenzi so people can see what we are responding to in this chat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laura Robson has defended her Sky Sports colleague Tim Henman after the four-time Wimbledon semi-finalist claimed there is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[4719,48032,198,79,1068,31635,186557,5838,11910,48674,16,15,184692],"class_list":{"0":"post-592702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp-tour","9":"tag-laura-robson","10":"tag-sky-sports","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-tennis-section","14":"tag-tennis-calendar","15":"tag-tennis-news","16":"tag-tennis-schedule","17":"tag-tim-henman","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-yevgeny-kafelnikov"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115610089267515711","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}