As the sun sets on 2024, the 2025 tennis season is already casting its shadow. With tournaments like the United Cup, Hong Kong Open, Brisbane International, and Auckland Open scheduled to start on December 30, players are bracing for a new season before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. This relentless schedule, with barely any downtime between seasons, has become a talking point for players past and present. Ex WTA Pro Shelby Rogers has made a very interesting observation about the new season.

On December 27th, the retired American player Shelby Rogers took to Instagram and shared her ex-coach, Marc Lucero’s social media post, that said, “Shout out to all the players who are going to catch their first loss of the 2025 season before the calendar flips 😂😂 so freaking brutal,” she wrote. Tagging her coach Lucero, who has coached her from 2014 to 2019, she quipped, “Hahahaha, more is better ya know 🤦‍♀️.” 

Her comments struck a chord, shedding light on the fact that players who face a first-round loss in these tournaments may begin the new season with a loss before 2024 even ends.

Fun fact: Rogers, who retired earlier this year, knows the demands of the tour all too well. The former World No. 30 in singles and No. 40 in doubles had an impressive career, with highlights including quarterfinal finishes at the 2016 French Open and 2020 US Open. Her coach, Lucero, was instrumental in helping her navigate a packed schedule and achieve these career milestones.

To put it into perspective, author Bastein Fachan had tweeted a shocking stat on X.

He wrote, ” “Last point of the 2024 tennis season: December 22, 9:38pm (Jeddah time). First point of the 2025 tennis season: December 27, 10:09am (Perth time). Duration of this year’s tennis offseason: 4 days, 7 hours, 31 minutes.” 

The hectic tennis calendar has been the talk of town for a long time now. But it’s not just retired players like Rogers speaking up. Current tennis stars had voiced their frustrations with the relentless calendar in 2024 as well.

“Probably they are gonna kill us”: Players react to the tennis schedule

The topic of tennis’ relentless calendar has been a recurring conversation.

Earlier this year, Alexander Zverev expressed his frustration while talking to a reporter.“We have the longest season in sports… It’s unnecessarily long. We have an unnecessary amount of tournaments,” he said. Similarly, Iga Swiatek shared her struggles with the nonstop nature of the tour during the US Open, saying, “We don’t have time to work on stuff or live peacefully… because from one tournament we’re going straight to another.”

The World No. 3, Carlos Alcaraz recently made a bold statement about the packed schedule to the reporters at Laver Cup in September. The Spaniard said, “Probably during the next few years, it’s going to be even more mandatory tournaments. Probably they are gonna kill us in some way, right now there are … a lot of injured (players) because of the calendar. Probably at some point a lot of good players are going to miss a lot of tournaments because of that.”

Reacting to these complaints, the ATP chief Andrea Gaudenzi defended the tennis calendar and told L’Equipe., “Some players choose to do a lot of exhibitions off the tour. You don’t see that in other sports. The question is whether you want to invest on the tour or off the tour. Shorten the season? OK, but then you have to reduce the number of ATP 250 tournaments . Players can also decide to play fewer exhibitions and spend more time resting.”

As the 2025 season kicks off, the conversation around tennis’ packed schedule is heating up yet again. Do you think players deserve more rest?