Much handwringing again this week about how to fix tennis because of all of the pullouts from the Paris Masters event. Sometimes you can blame the players when they pull out with scant notice just to get some extra rest, but in this case everyone knows the injuries to Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Marat Safin, Lleyton Hewitt, etc. are legitimate.
Shortening the season seems to be a non-starter since the Australian Open refused to knuckle under and play sacrificial lamb earlier this year, so L'Equipe came up with its own list of possible solutions to the scheduling troubles and Eurosport was kind enough to do some translation work:
L'Equipe ran an article on Monday, stating what the sport's associations: ATP, Women's Tennis Association and International Tennis Federation, could do to ease the scheduling dilemma.
The French daily sports newspaper noted players should not compete in more than three tournaments per month with events on the same continent each week.
Tennis balls should be standardised worldwide according to the surface and best-of-five set finals outside of the four major championships should be scrapped.
The newspaper also proposed a limit of Masters Series tournaments to five per season and top-ranked players banned from entering lower-tier events.