Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, the ATP Tour season came to an end ahead of the Davis Cup Finals. The calendar again came under scrutiny, a stacked field revealed a lot about tennis politics, and a women’s star stood up for her nation again.

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What is the future of the tennis calendar?

At the ATP Tour Finals last week, tour chairman Andrea Gaudenzi spoke in depth about the much-discussed tennis schedule. Gaudenzi’s extension of the ATP (and by association WTA) 1,000-level tournaments has come in for heavy criticism from players and fans through the year.

Gaudenzi defended the change in Turin. “If you look at the top-line revenue, that I cannot disclose, it’s going really up high. It’s changing a lot,” he said. The financial improvements for players are undeniable, but their complaints revolve around the lack of downtime created by adding 15 “on the road” days to their calendars.

Gaudenzi also stressed that, apart from the Grand Slams, the ATP Masters 1000s should be what all the top players strive to compete in. He argued that those players should not be playing ‘down’ at 250-level events, but those events, as well as 500-level events outside of the mandatory four per year, can be popular with players because they can come with hefty appearance fees.

For players lower down the pyramid, ATP 250 and ATP 500 tournaments are also vital routes toward qualifying for these expanded ATP Masters 1000 tournaments, as well as for the main draws of Grand Slams. They offer a trajectory toward the top of the sport, while being hugely popular events with tennis fans all over the world, especially in places which don’t get to host the biggest tournaments.

Gaudenzi wants there to be fewer of them, with 10 weeks of 250-level tournaments (with more than one per week.)

“In the last few years, we’ve had the strategy to reduce the number of 250s. We are from 38 down to, I don’t remember exactly the number, I think it’s 29. [30]

“The target in our effort to optimize the calendar for 2028, when the new Saudi Masters will come on board, is to continue to reduce the number of 250s,” Gaudenzi said.

Streamlining the calendar with fewer low-level events was foundational to the so-called “Premium Tour” put forward by the Grand Slams in 2023 and 2024, as well as the ATP and WTA’s proposal for a restructuring of the calendar in March, which was dismissed by the slams. The plan pledged to cut the number of ATP and WTA tournaments, including the four Grand Slams, from 118 to around 75.

Chipping away at the number of 250s will not have the same sort of impact, but it’s another indication of where the ATP thinks it can streamline the calendar, and how protecting and promoting its crown jewels, the 1,000-level events, remains paramount to Gaudenzi’s vision, even with feedback from players and fans that they are not working in their current form. It also indicates the contradictory nature of both the schedule itself and some of the players’ concerns, with guarantees for players further down the rankings incompatible with a more liberal market for tournaments.

There will be a review of the extension in 2030.

Charlie Eccleshare

How did Iga Świątek deliver for Poland again?

The WTA Tour offseason began with… more tennis, as the Billie Jean King Cup playoffs to decide which nations would make it into next year’s qualifying competition for the Finals took place across the globe.

Their place in the calendar meant that most nations’ elite players did not participate, but Victoria Mboko rounded off her 2025 rise by playing for Canada, Linda Nosková turned out for Czechia and world No. 2 Iga Świątek led team Poland as she has so often done in recent years.

The six-time Grand Slam champion’s results against New Zealand and Romania were routine, losing just three games in two matches, as might be expected against world No. 909 Elyse Tse of New Zealand and world No. 292 Gabriela Lee of Romania. More telling was Świątek’s desire to play, even suggesting that she might play the doubles against New Zealand despite her team telling her to rest, and the hero’s welcome she received from Polish fans in Gorzów Wielkopolski.

Świątek is one of several players to lament the relentlessness of the tennis calendar this year, intimating that she would be skipping more mandatory WTA Tour events in future in order to optimize her performance at the tournaments she most wants to win. So to see her forgoing a week of downtime to turn out for her country in a tie it largely had in hand was not just an indication of her pride in playing for Poland, but also of how the nature of exhaustion in tennis, and which experiences players find to be tiring outside of basic physical work, can be more individual than is assumed.

James Hansen

What does the United Cup field say about tennis politics?

The United Cup draw takes place on Monday, with some enticing ties in store whoever is drawn against one another. Five of the world’s top 10 men and four of the world’s top 10 women have entered the event, including Coco Gauff and Taylor Fritz representing the U.S. Świątek, Alexander Zverev (Germany) and Jack Draper (U.K.) are among some of the other big names signed up for the mixed tournament that pits 18 nations against one another.

It takes place between January 2 and January 11, in Perth and Sydney, just ahead of the Australian Open. The stellar lineup is a reminder of why Tennis Australia was so resistant to Saudi Arabia’s desire for its new ATP Masters 1000 event to take place in that part of the calendar. The short Australian summer swing is key to its health as a tennis nation, and the United Cup is popular with players as a way of acclimatizing ahead of the first Grand Slam of the year in Melbourne.

The Saudi Masters 1000 event has not yet been assigned a calendar slot, but the expectation is that it will take place in February, from 2028, with ATP chairman Gaudenzi’s ideal outcome to have one group of tournaments running in South America at that time, and another in West Asia.

Which is good news for the United Cup, and arguably tennis in general, given how vibrant and fun an occasion it has become.

Charlie Eccleshare

Point of the week

Taylor Fritz did all he could against Carlos Alcaraz at the ATP Tour Finals, especially in the fifth game of the second set of their match. The world No. 1 still said no:

🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 ATP: 

🏆 Jannik Sinner (2) def. Carlos Alcaraz (1) 7-6(4), 7-5 to win the ATP Tour Finals in Turin, Italy. It is the Italian’s second triumph at the event.

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Carlos Alcaraz finishes the season as world No. 1.

📈 Félix Auger-Aliassime ascends three spots from No. 8 to No. 5 after his run at the ATP Tour Finals.

📉 Ben Shelton falls four places from No. 5 to No. 9.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Bologna, Italy: Davis CupFinals featuring Carlos Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev, Jakub Menšík, Flavio Cobolli

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the season comes to an end.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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