Jack Draper wants tennis to change its schedule, but former champion Jim Courier thinks some players aren’t getting their facts straight.
Tennis stars have been complaining pretty loudly about how long the season runs. And honestly, when you look at what they’re required to play, it’s a lot.
Top women’s players have to compete in four Grand Slams, 10 Masters-level tournaments, and six 500-level events just to avoid getting punished by the tour.
| Name | Age | Points | Stats 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jack Draper | 23 | 1,131 | 13 - 12 |
That’s 20 mandatory tournaments.
Most players can’t even hit that number. Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff, and Madison Keys have all had ranking points taken away because they didn’t play enough tournaments.
The whole debate got really heated after Holger Rune’s devastating injury at the 2025 Stockholm Open.
He tore his Achilles so badly that doctors say he might be out for more than a year. That’s the kind of injury that can completely change a career.
Draper ended his own season early during the US Open because of an arm problem. After seeing what happened to Rune, he and Taylor Fritz started pushing hard for schedule changes.
Draper specifically wants six weeks off during the off-season to let players recover properly.
But Courier isn’t buying it. On the Tennis Channel, he basically called out Draper’s math.
"I heard Jack Draper say an ideal off-season for him would be six weeks off. Well, guess what? The least amount of time off are the players who will play the Davis Cup finals next week, they’ll get six weeks off before the next tournament."
Courier says players already get that much time off, and most get way more.
"So, if you’re a WTA top ten player, you didn’t make the WTA Finals. You can get 10 weeks off since the last mandatory event, which was the WTA event in Tokyo, the 500. For the men, the last mandatory, the 1000 in Paris. That’s nine weeks off."
The four-time Grand Slam winner got pretty specific with his numbers.
Players who made it to the WTA Finals? They get two full months off. Jannik Sinner, who’s skipping Davis Cup, gets seven weeks to recover.
"So there is a lot more off-season than maybe some of the public understand. I’m not saying that that’s necessarily enough. I personally think that it is."
Courier thinks the real problem isn’t the off-season length.
He believes players need more breaks scattered throughout the year instead of one long break at the end. That way, they can recharge before hitting that wall where injuries start happening.
"I think that there’s more of a problem as taking breaks during the season, not just in the off-season to give yourself a chance to refresh, but I think it’s really important that we set the table for what the facts actually are, because facts are very loosely used in this discussion."
It’s an interesting point. Maybe the issue isn’t how much time players get off, but when they get it.
With injuries like Rune’s making headlines, both sides will probably keep pushing their arguments. The question is whether tennis officials will listen to the players’ concerns or stick with Courier’s view that the current system already gives enough time to recover.
