I have been a tennis fan for 30 years, and I cannot remember a quieter lead-up to the US Open than this one.
The men’s Masters 1000 draw in Montreal opened on August 2 without Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, or Novak Djokovic. Twelve days later, Ben Shelton defended his title over Brandon Nakashima with 6-3, 7-6(4) win. If you’re counting, “12 days later” puts the final in the middle of the week. A final SCHEDULED for the middle of the week. Not because there was four days of torrential rain — a Thursday on purpose. Tennis finals are on Sundays. It’s the way…except not.
Up the highway in Toronto, Iga Swiatek captured her first title of 2026, and even that landed too softly — because by the time the final arrived, the thing had been running so long everyone had lost the thread. Cincinnati began on August 13, the same day Montreal ended. Sinner withdrew on August 9 with a troublesome right knee, and Alcaraz with the wrist that has kept him sidelined since April.
I’m just going to say it. The two-week Masters is a failed experiment. It has hollowed out the most valuable weeks on the calendar, so that fans have become ambivalent about events that were once exciting.
Here is the arithmetic nobody in the boardroom wants to say out loud: 96 players and 12 days means a seeded player flies in, practices, waits, waits some more, plays their first match on day four, then plays every other day for a week. Run two of those back-to-back and you have swallowed August. Alexander Zverev, speaking in Montreal on August 12, put it about as bluntly as a player can. “If you play everything and you’re a top player, you spend seven weeks here in North America. That is quite a long time and I think that’s why a lot of top players choose not to play Canada for multiple years now.” His remedy was not complicated. “It’s quite simple. Make us be here for two weeks, not seven.”
He was similarly critical last summer. “I don’t know a single player, and I’d say not even a fan, who enjoys the two-week Masters 1000 events,” Zverev said, before adding the line that ought to be tacked to a wall at the ATP headquarters in London. “I understand tennis is a business, but I think this business model isn’t working.”
Canada is where the whole thing shows its seams, because Canada is two tournaments in two cities. When Rome or Cincinnati stretches out, at least the men and the women stretch out together, in one place, feeding one another’s crowds and one another’s storylines. Montreal and Toronto each get 12 days to fill with a combined event’s worth of attention. Split the marquee, double the length, and you have manufactured a fortnight of increasingly dead air.
The clay swing has the same disease. Madrid into Rome is a month of compulsory, grueling tennis, arriving right before the biggest clay tournament in the world. Rome lost Alcaraz, Taylor Fritz, Jack Draper, and Holger Rune before a ball was struck. Then there is Monte-Carlo — 56 players over one week in April, not even a mandatory event, which produced Sinner over Alcaraz 7-6(5), 6-3 with the top of the draw intact. The tournament nobody is required to play is the one everybody loves.
The players are not subtle about this. Alcaraz was asked in Barcelona on April 15, two days after that Monte-Carlo final, about the topic. “I’ll always defend one-week tournaments. I think you see the best tennis there; there’s more excitement.” He added that a tighter event is better for people who don’t already watch tennis, which is precisely the argument the tour claims to be making with the expansion. Days later his wrist gave out at that same tournament, and he has not played since — missing Roland Garros and Wimbledon on the way to a U.S. Open he is supposed to be defending.
Ninety-six-player draws were sold to us as more tennis. What we got instead is more days, fewer stars, and a summer that expires before the major it was built to set up. There were record ticket sales in Montreal, I am told. I believe it…selling 12 days of seats instead of seven is bound to make more money…but at what expense?
We are staring down the barrel of a tour that is actively losing fan interest and player commitment. It was once true that warmup events were nearly as exciting as majors. No more.
As fan excitement deteriorates, I am increasingly concerned for the sport. I hope I’m wrong.
IW and Miami should obviously stay the same
the rest of the 2-weekers are horrible
It’s hard to see the benefit of what they have done for players or fans. Possibly more money for the extra R1 lower-level players? …but couldn’t those play in extra 250s or Challengers that making the 1000s original length again would make a gap for?