Tennis icon Martina Navratilova has identified a tennis problem that is “horrible for the top players” after Carlos Alcaraz’s complaints about the tennis schedule.

Alcaraz returned from over four months out with a wrist injury to compete at the 2026 US Open, and the Spanish star has warned he will be forced to take breaks from the tour due to the demands of the calendar.

“Returning took me more time than I wanted, to be honest,” the seven-time Grand Slam champion said after his second round win in New York.

“Obviously I didn’t want to have this break because of an injury, but in the future, I’m going to take some breaks, some long breaks.

“Maybe not four months, but one month, two months, missing some tournaments, because it’s impossible to play them all.

“I think they are adding more important tournaments. In a way, they are forcing us to choose. You can skip one or two, you can decide your calendar, but there are some Masters 1000s, Grand Slams [that you can’t skip], and we are going to play for 40 weeks if we are going to play every mandatory tournament that the ATP requires us to play.

“It’s impossible, and we are seeing a lot of players getting injured, a lot of players are getting tired, and if they don’t do anything about it, we are going to see it even more [injuries] in the future.”

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In a post on X/Twitter, Navratilova responded to Alcaraz’s comments by criticising 12-day 1000 level tournaments.

“These 12-day events are great for the tournament, for making $ and great for the fans, [but] they are horrible for the top players,” the 18-time major singles champion wrote.

In 2023, the ATP Tour extended the Masters 1000 events in Madrid, Rome and Shanghai to 12 days and increased the number of players in the singles draws to 96.

The same expansion was applied to tournaments in Indian Wells, Miami and Shanghai in 2024, while it was introduced in Canada and Cincinnati starting with the 2025 editions.

Prior to the changes, seven of the nine Masters tournaments were played over a single week and featured 56-player singles draws, with Indian Wells and Miami each lasting 10 days.

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