In one of the latest episodes of his podcast Served With, the former American tennis player Andy Roddick touched on many interesting topics, including the much-criticized seasonal schedule and how tennis has a decidedly intense calendar that many players have complained about, one above all Carlos Alcaraz.
Roddick instead praised Iga Swiatek who complained about the schedule more than any other player but was brave enough to make the decision to stop, skipping the entire Asian Tour and consequently losing the WTA ranking throne to Aryna Sabalenka. In the same speech about the tennis schedule and the complaints of tennis players about the density of events in 11 months of season, Roddick harshly attacked (without directly quoting him) Carlitos Alcaraz, balancing criticism towards the Spaniard with praise for Swiatek
“Iga has simply made it clear that he is in a state of burnout, in a situation of strong psychological and physical stress. A lot of people talk about how the tennis season is too long and then they add 17 exhibitions in the week before some other event. That’s their choice. I will never beat anyone for managing or mismanaging a schedule. But it’s nice when someone says there’s this big scheduling problem that we all talk about and I back off at this stage of my…