When Alexander Zverev plays his first match against Russia’s Andrei Rublev at the ATP Finals in Turin on Monday evening, it will be his 104th match on the tour this season. The German played 86 singles in 2024, plus 16 doubles. With 66 individual victories he leads the annual rankings, world number one Jannik Sinner has 65 but only six defeats.
Alexander Zverev is a frequent player, at least by today’s standards. It has been a long time since any professional men’s team has reached the mark of 100 individual matches in a season. Even Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic never played more than 97 times at the professional level. 50 years ago things were completely different. In 1977, Guillermo Vilas played an incredible 145 times in singles and won 130 of them. Mind you, at official tournaments.
With his 46 wins in a row, the Argentine set a record in men’s tennis that is still valid today – for comparison: Novak Djokovic has played that many matches in total this season.
© Imago/Sven Simon
Times have changed in tennis. The power density is significantly greater today. In addition, games are now played on hard courts much more often than before; Vilas won 14 of his 16 titles on clay in 1977. The US Open also took place on clay in Forrest Hills. However, there were no tournament breaks at the time. The season ran from January to December.
However, no one among today’s active people comes up with the idea that the burden on tennis professionals has now been reduced as a result. Quite the opposite: year after year, the appointment calendar is an issue for women and men alike. The opinions are unanimous, Alexander Zverev’s recent statement at the Laver Cup would be signed by pretty much every top player: “We have the longest season ever in sport, unnecessarily long, with an unnecessarily large number of tournaments.”
145
Matches Guillermo Vilas competed in 1977 and won 130 of them. A record to this day.
The ATP has scheduled 66 men’s tournaments this year and is now being played in more than 30 countries. And the professionals only have a limited say when it comes to their tournament preferences. With the four Grand Slams and eight Masters 1000 events, twelve events are mandatory. There are also four more starts at ATP 500 tournaments, one of which has to take place after the US Open.
Every top professional has to complete a total of 19 tournaments, and number 20 is added for the best eight of a season with the ATP finals now taking place. “I am one of the players who thinks that there are already a lot of compulsory tournaments every year,” said Carlos Alcaraz recently in Berlin and pointed out: “They will kill us in one way or another.”
They will kill us one way or another.
Carlos Alcaraz at the Laver Cup to the strain in tennis
Now you might dismiss these sayings as high-level whining from lavishly paid tennis millionaires, and yet physical problems are also increasing among the stars. Zverev has also played the most matches this season because he hasn’t taken any major time off due to injury. The second half of the year was somewhat unusual for him from a medical perspective.
He injured his knee in a fall at Wimbledon, but only shortly afterwards competed again in Hamburg and at the Olympics. There, in Paris, he complained of tiredness and exhaustion. The break he then took lasted a little over a week. At the Laver Cup in Berlin in September, Zverev played with a fever and was later diagnosed with pneumonia.
However, he didn’t spare himself for long, and shortly afterwards he traveled on to Shanghai for the Masters 1000 there. He had already explained why he did this at the Laver Cup: “We are punished if we don’t play tournaments.” The longest break, that The time Zverev took between two tournaments this year was around three weeks – including travel to and from the event.
A tennis professional is often not at home during a season anyway. Now it’s no longer just the Grand Slams that last two weeks. Some Masters 1000 tournaments also last ten or even twelve days by combining the competitions for women and men. And this could even get worse in the future. Despite the longer duration of the tournament, there are hardly any real rest days between two matches for the professionals. And so there is less and less time to work on physical fitness or improve your game in training. The result: injuries.
In the case of Alexander Zverev, however, there have long been at least slight doubts as to whether his tournament schedule is really optimally put together. The ATP Finals are his 23rd event this season. For Sinner, the home game in Turin will only be tournament number 14, Alcaraz has 16. However, both were out for some time this year due to injuries and therefore did not make the 19 tournament participations that were actually required.
Novak Djokovic, who withdrew from the ATP Finals due to injury and who is no longer bound by the guidelines due to his age, only took part in ten events. Frequent player Zverev can at least claim that he knows exactly where he stands before the year-end tournament. He recently won the title at the Masters in Paris and, despite all the aches and pains, is likely to be the strongest player in Turin.
The 27-year-old from Hamburg will then call it a day for the year. This year he is skipping the final round of the Davis Cup, which takes place the week after the ATP finals. However, he doesn’t have much time for relaxation. The new tennis season in Australia begins on December 27th with the United Cup. The defending champion there is – Germany with Alexander Zverev.
