Tennis stars reveal welfare concerns: Playing while injured, overbearing sponsors and 'rat race' rankings

The National

2 days ago

A little over two years ago, Emma Raducanu underwent three surgeries in just 10 days to fix issues in both wrists and one of her ankles.
The former US Open champion revealed at the time that she had been dealing with those injuries for 10 months, and after trying to manage the pain and 'playing through it', she ultimately had no choice but to go under the knife.
Raducanu later told The Sunday Times the pain in her wrists had escalated after Wimbledon 2022.
'I started with a new coach and I was really motivated to get going. We were overtraining, a lot of repetition, and I carried on even through pain because I didn't want to be perceived as weak,' she admitted.
Caroline Garcia, a former world No 4, recently shared a lengthy post on social media about how the idea of playing through pain is drilled into an athlete's mindset from a young age and that they're 'conditioned' to believe that competing while injured is 'somehow honourable or necessary'.
Garcia said she had been living on anti-inflammatories to manage shoulder pain and received corticoid injections and plasma treatments so she could keep competing. Two weeks ago, Garcia, 31, announced she will be retiring from tennis this season.
Welfare is increasingly under the spotlight with many top players airing complaints to the press about what they believe has become a gruelling and dangerous tour schedule.
'Probably they are going to kill us in some way,' said Carlos Alcaraz last September, while Iga Swiatek has been openly criticising the WTA since the tour increased the number of mandatory tournaments last season.
Such is the physical toll and grind of the tour that players are seldom 100 per cent when on court.
Knowing when to power through is a common dilemma for any professional athlete, and for tennis players, the pressure to keep going comes in many different forms, with some feeling as though they are forced to continue playing.
Those pressures might stem from an outdated coaching culture of playing through the pain barrier as Garcia suggested, but they also come from a ranking system Casper Ruud describes as a 'rat race', with potentially dire consequences for those unable to engage in the ceaseless pursuit or defence of points.
On the ATP Tour, pressure may come from a bonus system that shows little mercy to the injured, but is in place to ensure fans get to watch the best possible players at the biggest tournaments.
Pressure also comes from sponsors, whose expectations will undoubtedly influence scheduling and vital equipment choices.
The net result is that many players – even those at the pinnacle of the sport – feel they lack the autonomy to take total control of their careers.
Raducanu told The National in Abu Dhabi last year that the pressure to keep playing before she eventually had her multiple surgeries came 'from various sources'.
The pressure from sponsors, the pressure from the ranking, the pressure of providing, I don't know, some players provide for their families as well. It is a very tough sport, unfortunately.
Ons Jabeur
'I chased tournaments, I chased a bit too much points, and I think this year I'm just taking my time in between, really just not chasing tournament to tournament, running around,' she said.
Still 22 and gaining experience on the WTA Tour, Raducanu confessed that taking full ownership of the major decisions affecting her career remains a work in progress.
'I don't think it's something that even now I have really fully figured out,' she said at April's Madrid Open. 'I think it's something that I have been dealing with the last few years, and not necessarily knowing what I should do and taking a lot of advice from other people, even though I may have felt differently in certain situations.
'But I think I have started literally this tournament and Miami, just kind of listening to my intuition a bit better and I think every time I've followed my head and my gut has gone against it, it's been the wrong decision for me and the few times that I have kind of followed what I feel, it has been right. So, I think I'm learning those lessons as I go along.'
Tunisia's Ons Jabeur has wrestled with similar quandaries and finally decided to follow her gut when she pulled out of last year's US Open to repair her injured shoulder. She pulled the plug on her season in August and returned to action the following January.
'That decision came very late because I was suffering with my shoulder a lot. I couldn't play. It was affecting my game. It was affecting my confidence. Yeah, pushing through injury, I've been doing that my whole life,' Jabeur told reporters at Roland Garros last week.
'We have a lot of guilt inside us, saying we're not doing enough or it's not enough.
'The pressure from sponsors, the pressure from the ranking, the pressure of providing, I don't know, some players provide for their families as well. It is a very tough sport, unfortunately. I'm learning. I'm 30 years old, but I'm still learning in that.'
Three-time major finalist Ruud had been managing a knee problem throughout the entire clay season before he suffered his earliest French Open exit since 2018, losing to Nuno Borges in the second round last week.
The Norwegian described the tennis tour as a 'rat race' and said the system in place that penalises players for missing mandatory events is 'questionable'.
'You feel you're obligated to play with certain rules that the ATP have set up with the mandatory events. You feel like you lose a lot if you don't show up and play, both economically, point-wise, ranking-wise and opportunity-wise,' said Ruud.
'For me, I know these weeks and months are really important for the remainder of the year and for my career.
'Of course, if my leg is broken, I won't play. But it's tough anyway, especially when there's a time with mandatory events to skip them because the punishments are quite hard, in terms of everyone else will play, gain points, and you won't. Also, there's a certain bonus system set up that is reduced if you don't show up to the mandatory events.'
Ruud is referring to the ATP tour's bonus pool compensation programme, which awards payments to the 30 players who earn the most ranking points at Masters 1000 events and the ATP Finals within a season. It is subject to the player fulfilling certain mandatory tournament participations. This year, a $21 million bonus pool will be distributed.
Every missed commitment could see a player's bonus compensation reduced by 25 per cent, which in some cases can be avoided by fulfilling on-site promotional activities.
American Taylor Fritz said he once missed out on the bonus pool because he had a fractured foot and didn't play Madrid and Rome. 'That's kind of ridiculous,' he said.
An explainer video released by the ATP Tour states 'this system ensures that top players show up consistently and that fans see the best players in the world compete against each other at ATP's biggest events, while also rewarding performance and participation throughout the season, not just at the majors.'
You feel you're obligated to play with certain rules that the ATP have set up with the mandatory events. You feel like you lose a lot if you don't show up and play, both economically, point-wise, ranking-wise and opportunity-wise.
Casper Ruud
Ruud says it is unfair. 'It's a questionable system. You're kind of forcing players to show up injured or sick, or whatever, when that is not what I think is very fair,' he said.
Stefanos Tsitsipas echoed Ruud's sentiments. He says he once played the Masters 1000 events in Indian Wells and Miami while badly injured because he felt pressured to do so.
Skipping mandatory tournaments doesn't just affect those vying for bonus pool compensation. It can affect a player's ranking, which comprises the points accumulated from a certain number of events from specific categories. Missing one of those events could result in a fine (which can be appealed), as well as having a zero-pointer in your ranking.
'As much as we have to adjust to the schedule of what we're doing and try to comply with all these tournaments and all these mandatory things that we need to attend and do, I feel like there are a few things that leave us not very flexible, such as contracts, such as tournament appearances,' said Tsitsipas.
It is also common for contracts with sponsors to include tournament appearance clauses, which adds a layer to the decision-making process.
Former US Open champion Bianca Andreescu lost the majority of her sponsors because injuries prevented her from competing regularly on tour.
'With certain sponsors, you have to play a certain number of tournaments,' said Andreescu. 'And yeah, that can be difficult for sure.
'Because I'm sure we all want to play day in and day out. But for me, for instance, I haven't had that. So, it did come to the cost of losing sponsors. I lost almost every one of my sponsors because of that.'
Andreescu recalls an incident she faced with a sponsor when she had a knee injury in 2020. 'There was one issue with one sponsor, that if I didn't do a commercial on this specific day, they would have wiped out my contract,' she said. 'And so, I was like, 'Hey, can you compromise a little bit here?' I didn't do it. They said, 'OK, that's fine. We'll do it another time'. And then, bam! I didn't have that contract.'
Jabeur feels contracts for female athletes can be particularly tricky and can affect major decisions, like taking time away from the sport to have a baby.
'I feel we should do better with women's contracts. Because if a woman is injured or wants to get pregnant, they don't get paid. I've seen that in so many contracts, we don't see that in male contracts,' the three-time major finalist said.
'It's a bit weird. It's 2025, and we're still wrestling with that. Hopefully, that can be fixed. They should see a woman as she is, as an ambassador, as a great woman, representing herself, her country, them, but not when she wants to become a mum and they drop everything.'
Tennis players are considered independent contractors, which theoretically affords them freedoms that other athletes, who play for teams or clubs and are part of a league, don't necessarily have.
But it's not always that simple. A player recently told The National they wanted to change their racquet but weren't sure how they would get out of their current contract with a specific manufacturer.
They tried, and failed, to get their sponsor to tinker with their racquet and ended up testing another brand that suited them better. They have yet to figure out a way to make the switch without risking a heavy penalty.
Tsitsipas faced a similar issue and suddenly began playing on tour with a blacked-out Babolat racquet while still under contract with Wilson.
Many players have a psychological barrier when it comes to changing their racquet, even if a switch will help them unlock parts of their game they haven't been able to with their existing set-up.
'It's not an easy decision,' Tsitsipas said last month in Madrid.
'It requires ferocity and being a really big risk-taker because you are used to a certain thing for so long and you don't know what's out there. And it can be a tricky thing, especially during the middle of the season, the beginning of the season. These things need to happen before the season starts.'
Ahead of the start of this season, Madison Keys switched to Yonex when her contract with Wilson ended – a move that was heavily encouraged by her husband and coach Bjorn Fratangelo. It paid dividends immediately as she claimed a maiden grand slam title in Australia in January.
Keys, 30, said that getting to make her own decisions was not easy at the start of her career, and it wasn't until she started working with former world No 1 Lindsay Davenport that she realised how important it was to take ownership.
'She really pushed me to start making my own decisions, kind of setting my own schedule and not being afraid of getting a fine or taking a zero somewhere if I didn't want to go to a tournament,' explained Keys.
'She really emphasised that if you want to be around for a long time and you want the longevity of your career, you need to be happy, you need to be doing what you want to do. So I think that was kind of slowly when I started making some of my own decisions.'
Former world No 1 Andy Murray, who retired last year, does not believe players are forced to do anything – a realisation that came to him later on in his career.
'I never made decisions based on bonus pool, but it would be more about, 'I would get a zero-pointer or it might affect my ranking,' [then it] might have been something I would have considered,' he said.
'But then, as I got older and when I reflect on that and what I've said to some coaches that work with younger players and stuff, I said, you don't have to play those events. Everyone says the schedule is very long, which it is; it's definitely a long season, and now with the two-week events, it's quite demanding, but you also always have the choice not to play.
'It's like yes, you might get a zero-pointer, you might lose a few ranking points, or not be part of a bonus pool. But that's a decision, you're saying I don't want to play because … or I'm making a decision to play because it's better for me financially.'
Murray says the same goes for entering contracts with racquet manufacturers.
'That's a decision you don't need to take,' said the Scot. 'You cannot sign a contract and get paid and choose to play with whichever racquet manufacturer you want as well. So I don't necessarily think there's pressure on the player in that respect.'