If organizers schedule an important tennis tournament and a slew of the world’s best players miss it, is it still an important tournament?
This is the question the Madrid Open will present to the tennis world over the next 10 days. It was a similar story at the Canadian Open last summer, when Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka skipped the event.
The Madrid Open and the Canadian Open are two of the six biggest mixed events in tennis outside the Grand Slams, known as ATP Masters 1000s and WTA 1000s. The BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., the Miami Open, the Italian Open and the Cincinnati Open are the others.
These events award the most prize money and ranking points, other than the season-ending ATP and WTA Tour Finals, for which only the top eight singles players of the season qualify. They also receive the most money for sponsorships and media rights.
Licenses for these events are valued at roughly $500 million. Tennis isn’t making more of them at the moment. The Grand Slams aren’t for sale. A 1000-level license is the most valuable commodity in the sport.
Fans also travel from all manner of time zones and cross plenty of borders to attend — and to see their favorite players. During a combined ATP and WTA 1000 event, nothing can happen at the tour level anywhere else — these events are supposed to be the center of the tennis universe. They run 12 days, which is why ATP Challenger Tour and WTA 125 events (the second rungs of professional tennis) see their entry lists get stacked during the second week of the headline show, in case top players lose early.
But over the past 18 to 24 months, the biggest stars in the sport have been getting more outspoken about the relentlessness of the 11-month season, and more choosy about which events they skip, in the hope of extending their careers. At this year’s Madrid Open, the event has run into a bit of bad luck with one of the brightest lights in the entire sport.
The rest of its laundry list of withdrawals — 23 across the men’s and women’s draws — is connected to its place in the tennis calendar, and its outlier status in the clay-court swing that defines the middle part of the year.
Alcaraz, a two-time winner of the event who last year missed it with a forearm injury, made it two straight misses last week. He withdrew from the Barcelona Open with a wrist injury after winning his first match, then pulled out of the Madrid Open.
At the time, the move seemed like a mere precaution — Alcaraz wants to be in peak physical form to defend his French Open title — but the story became far more ominous Monday, when Alcaraz showed up to the Laureus Sports Awards dinner in Madrid wearing a splint.
“I’m trying to be very patient these days, but we’re doing OK, we’re here, waiting for some tests in the coming days. From there, we’ll see how the injury is and what the next steps will be,” Alcaraz said during a news conference at the Laureus event.
“I’m just trying to stay positive and keep my spirits up, even though these days feel long.”
On the same day Alcaraz pulled out, Djokovic announced he would skip Madrid for the third time in four years. Djokovic, who will turn 39 next month, has become a kind of part-time tennis player, but he remains the world No. 4, proving that when he shows up for big events and feels motivated, there are only two players in the world who can consistently beat him — Alcaraz and Sinner.
“Madrid, unfortunately, I won’t be able to compete this year,” Djokovic wrote on social media. He lost in the quarterfinals at Indian Wells, then dropped out of the Miami Open with a right-arm injury. He has not played since.
“I’m continuing my recovery to be back soon.”
Djokovic’s announcement didn’t come as a shock, even though he is a three-time winner in Madrid and has a home in Spain. Tournament organizers were distressed but not panicked by the rising tide of withdrawals.
“We hope to see you back here as soon as possible so we can enjoy your tennis as we have done so many times in the Caja Mágica,” the Madrid Open account posted on social media.
Other notable withdrawals include Jack Draper, last year’s finalist and a former world No. 4, who is nursing a knee injury, and a slew of Americans: Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda. On the women’s side, two-time major finalist Amanda Anisimova, the in-form Karolína Muchová, Emma Raducanu, Emma Navarro and Barbora Krejčíková are all out, but the top five players in the world are all present and correct.
Feliciano López, the former player who serves as the tournament co-director with two-time Grand Slam champion Garbiñe Muguruza, said in a statement Tuesday that the Madrid Open remains one of the key stops on the clay calendar.
“We deliver an event and experience players value,” López said. “Withdrawals are part of the sport and reflect individual circumstances in that moment. Players want to perform at their best and don’t want to miss Madrid unless they have to.”
For an event as big as the Madrid Open, most of the revenues — including media rights fees, sponsorships and the bulk of tickets, especially for the more expensive late-round matches — are locked in before players take the court for the first matches. The biggest short-term impact of withdrawals is on last-minute ticket buyers, and on disappointed fans hoping to see a star or two who end up missing out at the one tournament they can attend per year.
However, if the Madrid Open develops a reputation for failing to attract all the best players, selling high-priced sponsorships and hospitality packages would become harder. As players get choosier about which events they play, the Madrid Open is also one of the biggest tournaments at risk of withdrawals.
On the ATP Tour, most of the best male players are loath to miss the Monte-Carlo Masters. Many of them live in Monaco and train at the Monte-Carlo Country Club, where the event takes place. The Americans often play the U.S. Clay Court Championships in Houston on the men’s side, and the Charleston Open on the women’s side. They are both the week before the Monte Carlo Masters.
During that week, men’s and women’s players alike mostly rest, train and then fly across the Atlantic, before what for many of them becomes a three-month trip to Europe that doesn’t end until after Wimbledon. Given their lack of success on clay, any U.S. ATP Tour player with a longer-term injury concern (such as Taylor Fritz, who is managing knee tendonitis) is likely to pick the terre battue as their layoff period. Ben Shelton’s triumph at the Munich Open this past Sunday was the biggest win for an American man on clay since Andre Agassi won the Italian Open in 2002.
- The Madrid Open’s weather, altitude and calendar position make it an outlier on the European clay swing. (Julian Finney / Getty Images)
The Madrid Open also has some baked-in challenges from the sport’s calendar. Like the Canadian Open, it’s an ATP Masters and WTA 1000 event before a Grand Slam on the same surface. The Canadian Open, a hard-court event played in Toronto and Montreal because neither city has a venue big enough to house both tours at once, starts four weeks before the U.S. Open. The Madrid Open starts four weeks before the French Open.
But both tournaments have another 1000-level event between them and their accompanying Grand Slam — the Cincinnati Open follows the Canadian Open; the Italian Open follows the Madrid Open.
Given how physical the sport has become, players may decide it is not worth competing in back-to-back events right before a Grand Slam. The back-to-back-to-back lineup carries an increased risk of injury. According to two people briefed on discussions, who were not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing internal plans, the tours plan to look at the events’ timing as part of an ongoing effort to streamline and optimize the prize money, rankings and schedule for the 2028 season. The WTA Tour announced a council devoted to optimizing its calendar in February.
Then there are the conditions. Madrid sits more than 2,000 feet (about 650 metres) above sea level, and the weather can be hot and dry. Tennis balls fly faster through the air the thinner and drier it gets, and the Madrid Open has historically been more favorable to big-serving players than its clay-court cousins.
“It’s a different sort of clay court,” said Brian Garber, the coach of Ethan Quinn, the 22-year-old American.
If preparation for the French Open is the primary goal, Madrid would not come out on top against Rome, which is a much closer facsimile for elevation and weather. The Italian Open also comes without a potential three-week gap of no serious match practice in helpful conditions.
Additionally, the Madrid Open has a reputation among players and coaches as being a tough place to get extended time for practice courts. Organizers have scrambled in recent years to add additional courts to accommodate the tournament’s shift to a two-week event, with 96 players in each of the main draws, 48 in each of the qualifying draws, and 32 teams in each doubles event.
Real Madrid’s famous soccer stadium, the Bernabéu, will install a court to acclimatize the biggest stars away from prying eyes, thanks to a quirk in the team’s fixture schedule. This is in keeping with the event’s experimental streak: It is one of the most creative from a media perspective, offering live streams on Twitch and more complete highlights than most tournaments in its class.
Sinner, the world No. 1 who has won four consecutive ATP Masters 1000 tournaments going back to last season, generally doesn’t have much trouble finding a practice court. He’s never been past the quarterfinals in Madrid, providing him with a personal mission.
“I have to try to figure out how to play on this surface and in Madrid,” he told the Madrid Open’s official website. For the tournament, just being there might be enough.
