Jannik Sinner has withdrawn from his third round clash against Alex de Minaur at the Paris Masters due to fatigue after playing his previous match into the early hours of Thursday morning.
The world No.4 didn’t finish his second round meeting against America’s Mackenzie McDonald until 2:37am this morning. Despite this, he was controversially not given a slot to play his next match on Thursday evening and instead was expected to return to the court in the afternoon. If he had done so, there would have been a difference of around 14 hours between both matches.
“It’s not easy to go on the pitch after midnight, it’s very late. Now I just have to try to sleep and recover, we’ll see how I feel tomorrow,” Sinner told TennisTV after beating McDonald.
Paris’ controversial scheduling has triggered criticism from some senior figures in the sport. Norway’s Casper Ruud wrote on X, former known we Twitter, that the entire situation was a ‘joke.’
“Bravo, way to help one of the best players in the world recover and be as ready as possible when he finished his previous match at 2:37am this morning – 14.5 hours to recover.. what a joke,” wrote the Norwegian.
Stan Wawrinka replied to Ruud’s comment by accusing the tournament of not caring about players and said the ATP ‘will follow what the tournament wants.’ Meanwhile, Sinner’s coach Darren Cahill wrote on his Instagram “2.45 am. Happy for the Jannik Sinner win but zero care for the players’ welfare with Paris schedule.”
At this year’s Paris Masters, organizers have scheduled a total of six matches to take place on their premier court. Earlier this week, Dominic Thiem’s clash with Wawrinka also ended after 2am and Andrey Rublev won his match against Yoshihito Nishioka after midnight.
Sinner will return to action at the ATP Finals which will get underway on November 12th in Turin. Meanwhile, de Minaur’s next match in Paris will be against Rublev in the quarter-finals.
