More and more matches on the WTA tournament are scheduled for the night, and some of them even end after midnight. Iga Svyatek, the leader of the world hierarchy, spoke about this at a press conference in Cincinnati.

Iga Svyatek criticizes the WTA for the busy schedule of the players

Olena Rybakina and Ludmila Samsonova complained after several matches in a short period of time in Montreal (the Russian suffered a sharp defeat in the final against Jessica Pegula), and Iga Svyatek criticized the WTA management for the way the situation was handled.

“Of course we can’t predict the weather, but maybe we should focus more on what is healthy for the players because they have to play every week.

There is a lot of traveling on the circuit, we usually don’t have two days off, so in the future it would be positive to focus on the players, especially next year, when there will be more and more mandatory tournaments and more longer ones.

I think there were situations where the lack of professionalism was noticeable. I can’t say exactly what was done wrong, it seems that the most important thing here is the WTA.

The management is bad at the moment, but I hope something changes soon because there have already been a lot of situations this year that I really can’t understand. On the European Clay Tour, in both Rome and Madrid, I played four matches that ended at midnight or after midnight.

I understand that we have to adjust to TVs and stuff, but I also asked the WTA for some data to see if people are watching those matches that start at 10 p.m. I didn’t get anything, but it would be easier to see if it makes sense to play this late.

It’s not like we finish the match and go straight to bed, that’s not how things work. Many hours are spent in this section. In my case, I’m satisfied if I go to bed four hours after the match, where I have almost an hour of treatment, attention to the press, post-match stretching, dinner and then a little bit of adrenaline.

None of this is easy to do, I’d like to change that” – Iga Svyatekat a press conference in Cincinnati.

• Iga Svyatek (the main favorite) will play in the second round of the tournament in Cincinnati with the winner of the match between American Danielle Collins (34 WTA) and Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (100 WTA).

The Western & Southern Open (Cincinnati) is a WTA 1000 event. The tournament is played on hard from August 14 to 20, 2023, has a total prize pool of $2,788,468, and has a starting main draw of 64 players. Titled champion – Caroline Garcia.