Medvedev says the players are ready to play less, even if it means earning less
The Russian, speaking on Roland-Garros media day, said the locker-room consensus is that the tennis season should be shortened – and that most players would accept a pay cut to make it happen.
Daniil Medvedev, Roland-Garros 2026 | © JB Autissier / PsNewz
The eleven-month tennis calendar may now have a top-ten player saying, on the record, that his colleagues would accept less prize money to be allowed to play less of it. It was a counter-intuitive line to hear at Roland-Garros this week, when the prize money increase the top players are demanding has been the only off-court conversation. This player is Daniil Medvedev.
Medvedev, speaking at Roland-Garros on Friday, was asked about the physical toll of the modern game in the wake of Carlos Alcaraz’s wrist injury and the longer history of careers cut short – Juan Martín del Potro, Dominic Thiem – by chronic upper-limb damage. Rather than addressing Alcaraz’s case, which he declined to speculate on, he widened the question to the season itself.
“Even if it means, let’s say, getting less money, because there is less tournaments, most of the players would agree, That’s the talk in the locker room.”
“If somehow we managed to make this season shorter, like most other sports — even two weeks or one month — to be more free to choose,” Medvedev started. “If someone wants to take three weeks off after the season, now it’s not possible. If you play the Turin ATP Finals especially, you take three weeks off, you basically sacrifice Australian Open. And no one wants to sacrifice a Slam.”
And the line that does the work: “Even if it means, let’s say, getting less money, because there is less tournaments, I’m pretty sure most of the players would agree. That’s the talk in the locker room.”
The ATP season currently runs from late December to late November. Top-30 players – “commitment players”, in the language of the rulebook – are required to enter all four Grand Slams, the eight mandatory Masters 1000 tournaments, and four ATP 500 events, one of them after the US Open.
The Challenger circuit, where most of the lower-ranked professionals make their living, is expanding from 216 to 265 events in 2026. A new Saudi Arabia Masters 1000 has been announced for 2028.
Medvedev not the first voice
The protest unfolding this week at Roland-Garros – the 15-minute media commitment, the lower-ranks-prize-money argument, the call for greater player input on Slam scheduling – has so far been framed primarily around increase of the money and decision-making around players’ rights.
He is not the first top voice to say something like this. Alcaraz, Taylor Fritz and Alexander Zverev have all argued publicly over the past year that the calendar is unsustainable ; Alex de Minaur and Casper Ruud in softer words. What is new is the framing – not a request for the tours to act, but a claim about what players would themselves accept in return.
Medvedev declined to use the word boycott when it came on the scene. But he offered the negotiating position the players have not, until now, put on the table out loud. He does not expect it soon. “It’s not going to be done in probably next five years,” he said, “but maybe in ten years to make the season shorter. I think this could help a lot of players in general.”
The point of the question was not to increase the prize money but to reduce injuries.
