Let’s be honest folks. As one who has given myself up to the tennis gods and created a tennis blog, I’m a tennis nerd. I spend a lot of time watching it, reading, and being in the know. I have people’s tweets go to my phone so I’m always on top of things.
So then how ridiculous is that in one day away from the game, I can’t keep up with the amount of injuries?
Superhero Sam busted up her forcep and lost. Rusty Lleyton is out of Toronto. Venus has knee pain, and is advised not to play until said knee pain goes away, so she’s withdrawn from Cincy, and no word on Montreal (did I not totally call that she would skip out of Montreal cause her sister wouldn’t be there?). It could also be coincidence, but Tree isn’t playing Toronto and no one really seems to know why (if you do, hit me up, I haven’t been able to find out why).
There was some grumblings before the hard court season about injuries. It’s been a pretty ridiculous year for injuries, many wondered who would be out (or left…) come USO times. Obviously some huge gaps already, with Justine and Delpo missing the USO, Serena missing the whole hard court season, and a whole other slew of injuries as well as less serious ones causing players to retire from matches.
It’s been such a rough year for injuries, this 2010. I really hope the ATP and WTA sit down and have some serious talks about injuries and the tour schedule. Here’s an idea: screw with the ranking system a bit, and how points are awarded. Just an idea.
I have been saying for years that players should stop being penalised for being successful. When you look at the fact that both Federer and Nadal have been penalised in terms of rankings because they have been so successful at what they do then you realise that something has to be done.
Year in and year out these men and women have to be on top of their game consistently in order to retain their place in the rankings. It also means that they have to be playing tournaments when they are not healthy. Kudos to people like the Williams Sisters who refuse to play tournaments when they are injured and refuse to play in order to get some bonus pool money at the end of the year.
There are without a doubt some things better than money.
Good call. It does feel like that a bit. I think it’s important to want to market your top players, but it also has to be reasonable. Honestly, I don’t have a lot of great suggestions for this, but injuries are absolutely out of control, and something needs to be done. These people get paid the big bucks, hoping something is figured out or at least discussed.
The thing is that I do not think that there is much that can be done. The WTA has already streamlined the Tour as much as it can by breaking down tournaments into mandatory and non-mandatories. The problem seems to exist in that you have marquee names in the sport and these are the players who seem to get injured more often than the lesser lights.
Players also have to take some amount of responsibility for their situation. Azarenka and others who play through the pain cannot tell me that they cannot get confirmation from their doctors and/or the Tour doctor that they are not fit for play. They talk about fines etc but in the same breath they speak about bonus pool money at the end of the day.
Serena, the No. 1 player in the world has played 6 tournaments all year. Safina, Azarenka, Wozniacki, Radwanska and many others are scheduled to play back to back to back tournaments. Do not then come and complain when you get knocked out in the first round at the Open that you were required to play all these tournaments.
Nadal and Federer cannot in their right minds complain about long season either because for Nadal he has not played since Wimbledon and so has Federer. The schedule in my view cannot be any shorter because it is not only the top 20 that the Tours have to worry about but the Zakalapova’s and Chidenellis’s of this world that both Tours have to be concerned about.
Some good points. It goes both ways for sure.