King slams players in light of Alcaraz, Swiatek complaining about long season

Former world No 1 Billie Jean King has slammed players in light of complaints from the likes of Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek about the tennis schedule.

King spoke to BBC in Malaga, Spain, on the sidelines of her namesake women’s team competition — Billie Jean King Cup. The 12-time Grand Slam champion criticised the complainants, arguing they signed up for lucrative exhibitions whenever given the chance to take a breather.

“The calendar is really long, we know,” King said. “It’s interesting how they always complain there’s too much, they’ve been doing this forever by the way, but then they get a month off and they go play exhibitions. I’m like, ‘Really? You guys said you needed the rest.’ So don’t tell me the season is too long because I know, if there’s enough money, you go and play.”

Four-time Grand Slam champion and world No 3 Carlos Alcaraz, in a press conference during the 2024 Laver Cup in September, opined the calendar was loaded and the mandatory tournaments had been hard to cope with.

“There is a lot of tournaments during the year, mandatory tournament,” Alcaraz said. “And probably during the next few years gonna be even more tournaments, more mandatory tournaments. So, I mean, probably they are going to kill us in some way.”

The 2024 French Open champion Iga Swiatek voiced similar concerns regarding the mandatory tournaments, which include the four Grand Slams, 10 WTA 1000 tournaments, six WTA 500 events, and the WTA Finals.

“I believe that players are aware that what is happening is crazy, the schedule is truly tough,” the Pole said during the 2024 US Open. “They changed the rules about mandatory tournaments, and then showed them to us, we tried to talk but we have no impact. Our sport is going in the wrong direction because of these things.”

King proposes radical changes to schedule

While Billie Jean King condemned the protesting players, she proposed radical changes to the tennis schedule, suggesting the calendar should have only team competitions after the US Open — the final Grand Slam in a season.

“I think after the US Open should be team competitions,” she said. “I’d have a team season. I always think about the fans, I don’t think about the players all the time. You’ve got to think about the players and the fans. I want to grow the sport — spectatorship and participation.”

The 80-year-old further called for numbered jerseys for tennis players and the scoring system simplified for budding tennis fans:

“I would like to see names and numbers on the back of the shirt in tennis. I want to make it easy for fans. I think it should be 1-2-3-4 not 15-love, 30-love. If you are a kid — I didn’t come from tennis — what the heck does that mean? If we want to get eight, nine, 10, 11, 12-year-old children involved in our sport we have to make it accessible to them, not to a 60-year-old fan.”

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