{"id":611591,"date":"2025-12-04T11:56:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T11:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/611591\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T11:56:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T11:56:23","slug":"murray-wades-into-awkward-debate-as-players-getting-paid-lots-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/611591\/","title":{"rendered":"Murray wades into awkward debate as players ‘getting paid lots’ | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tennis schedule has been one of the hottest topics in tennis in recent years, especially with most Masters 1000 events moving from seven days to 12. Top players, including Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> and Jack Draper<\/a>, have been among those voicing concerns about the gruelling calendar. But Andy Murray<\/a> believes that his old colleagues must be clearer about the changes they want to see, given that some of the world\u2019s best players are still accepting \u201clots of money\u201d to compete in exhibition tournaments.<\/p>\n

Last year, world No. 1 Alcaraz said \u201cthey are going to kill us in some way\u201d<\/a> when discussing the demanding nature of the tennis tour, while British star Draper has warned that the gruelling calendar could lead to burnout<\/a>. Both stars, however, competed in a lucrative, two-day mixed doubles tournament ahead of this year\u2019s US Open – and Murray believes it\u2019s a sign that players can\u2019t agree on what the key issues are.<\/p>\n

Murray himself served on the ATP player council during his time on the tour and was against extending the Masters events beyond their original seven-day format. While he believes there should be changes made to the professional tennis circuit, the three-time Major winner wants to see the current players go about things in a different way.<\/p>\n

Appearing on the Tennis Podcast, the retired 38-year-old explained: \u201cI think, for things to change, probably the players need to be very clear about what it is – what do you actually want? What are actually the problems and does everyone actually agree on them?<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause sometimes you might hear players say, \u2018There\u2019s too many tournaments, we play too much\u2019. Generally it\u2019s the top players that will say that. Players ranked 70 in the world maybe don\u2019t want less tournaments, they maybe want as many tournaments as possible to earn money and more ranking points or opportunities for ranking points and things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former No. 1 Murray knows that the world\u2019s best players have good reason to want to compete less frequently – but he\u2019s struggling to understand what they really want, with some stars still embracing lucrative, extra tournaments into the calendar.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then they also, they want to play exhibitions as well. It\u2019s like, \u2018Oh there\u2019s too many tournaments. Oh but the mixed doubles at the US Open, that\u2019s a new event, we all want to play in that, this is an amazing idea, we all want to play more tennis because we\u2019re getting paid lots of money to do it, we\u2019re getting appearance fees to play\u2019,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then lots and lots of other tennis players, particularly doubles players, were hating that idea, but the top players loved it. So there\u2019s always – it\u2019s hard to get all of the players to always agree on things.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018There\u2019s too many tournaments – but we\u2019re going to put a new Masters tournament in Saudi Arabia, there\u2019s going to be lots and lots of money – oh yeah, that\u2019s a great idea, we all want to play in that event, that\u2019s really good\u2019. So it is hard to know exactly what all the tournaments want, what the Grand Slams want, what all the players want, and to come to some sort of agreement. It\u2019s very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

With so many governing bodies and parties who have conflicting interests in tennis, the debate about the schedule doesn\u2019t seem to be going away anytime soon. Emma Raducanu<\/a> recently suggested that it wasn\u2019t something worth \u201ccomplaining about\u201d<\/a>, while Iga Swiatek<\/a> has admitted that she may start skipping some tournaments<\/a> to give herself a break. For now, at least, players are enjoying the brief off-season before looking ahead to 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tennis schedule has been one of the hottest topics in tennis in recent years, especially with most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[5233,79,1068,5838,11910,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-611591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-andy-murray","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tennis","11":"tag-tennis-news","12":"tag-tennis-schedule","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115661175881906471","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611591","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=611591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}