Why tennis’ Madrid Open is a prestigious tournament full of curiosities

Licenses for these events are valued at roughly $500 million. Tennis isn’t making more of them at the moment. The Grand Slams aren’t for sale. A 1,000-level license is the most valuable commodity in the sport.

Fans also travel from all manner of time zones and cross plenty of borders to attend — and to see their favorite players. To be at one of these events is supposed to be akin to being at the center of the tennis universe, where it’s all happening, because by rule, during a combined ATP and WTA 1000 event, nothing can happen at the tour level anywhere else. They run 12 days, which is why ATP Challenger Tour and WTA 125 events — the second rungs of professional tennis — see their entry lists get stacked during the second week of the headline show, in case top players lose early.

But over the past 18 to 24 months, the biggest stars in the sport have been getting more outspoken about the relentlessness of the 11-month season, and more choosy about the events that they skip in order to play as much and as effectively as they can for as long as possible. At this year’s Madrid Open, the event has run into a bit of bad luck with one of the brightest lights in the entire sport.

The rest of its laundry list of withdrawals — 23 across the men’s and women’s draws, from and up down the rankings — is connected to its place in the tennis calendar, and its outlier status in the clay-court swing that defines the middle part of the year.

Alcaraz, a two-time winner of the event who last year missed it with a forearm injury, made it two straight misses last week. He withdrew from the Barcelona Open with a wrist injury after winning his first match, then withdrew from the Madrid Open too in short order.

At the time, the move seemed like a mere precaution. Alcaraz wants to be in peak physical form to defend his French Open title in late May. But the story became far more ominous Monday, when Alcaraz showed up to the Laureus Sports awards dinner in Madrid wearing a splint.

“I’m trying to be very patient these days, but we’re doing OK, we’re here, waiting for some tests in the coming days, and from there we’ll see how the injury is and what the next steps will be,” Alcaraz said during a news conference at the Laureus event.

“For now, I’m just trying to stay positive and keep my spirits up, even though these days feel long.”

On the same day Alcaraz pulled out, Djokovic announced he would skip Madrid for the third time in four years. Djokovic, who will turn 39 next month, is a kind of part-time tennis player at the moment, though he remains the world No. 4 because he has proven that when he shows up for big events and feels motivated, there are only two players in the world who can consistently beat him — Alcaraz and Sinner.

“Madrid, unfortunately I won’t be able to compete this year,” Djokovic wrote on social media. He lost in the quarterfinals at Indian Wells, then pulled out of the Miami Open with a right-arm injury. He has not played since.

“I’m continuing my recovery in order to be back soon. Hasta pronto!”

Djokovic’s announcement didn’t come as a shock, even though he is a three-time winner in Madrid and has a home in Spain. Tournament organizers, who were distressed but not panicked by the rising tide of withdrawals, met this announcement with regrets.

“We hope to see you back here as soon as possible so we can enjoy your tennis as we have done so many times in the Caja Mágica,” the tournament wrote on social media.

Other notable withdrawals include Jack Draper, last year’s finalist and a former world No. 4, who is nursing a knee injury, and a slew of Americans: Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda. On the women’s side, two-time major finalist Amanda Anisimova, the in-form Karolína Muchová, Emma Raducanu, Emma Navarro and Barbora Krejčíková are all out, but the top five players in the world are all present and correct.

Feliciano Lopez, the former player who serves as the tournament co-director with two-time Grand Slam champion Garbiñe Muguruza, said in a statement Tuesday that the Madrid Open remains one of the key stops on the clay calendar.

“We deliver an event and experience players value,” Lopez said. “Withdrawals are part of the sport and reflect individual circumstances in that moment. Players want to perform at their best and don’t want to miss Madrid unless they have to.”

For an event as big as the Madrid Open, most of the revenues, including media rights fees, sponsorships and the bulk of tickets, especially for the more expensive late-round matches, are locked in before players take the court for the first matches. The biggest impact of withdrawals is likely on last-minute ticket buyers — or on disappointed fans who were hoping to see a star or two and end up missing out at the one tournament they can attend per year.

That said, if the Madrid Open got a reputation for not being able to attract all the best players consistently, selling high-price sponsorships and hospitality packages could become more difficult. And if players are getting choosier about the events they play, the event is the biggest on the European clay-court swing with the most possible reasons to give it a miss, outside of sudden, acute injuries like the one Alcaraz suffered during his Barcelona Open win over Otto Virtanen of Finland.

On the ATP Tour, most of the best non-American men are loath to miss the Monte Carlo Masters. Many of them live in Monaco, and the event takes place at the Monte Carlo Country Club, where many of them train. The Americans often play the U.S. Clay Court Championships in Houston on the men’s side, and the Charleston Open on the women’s side. They are both the week before the Monte Carlo Masters.

During that week, men’s and women’s players alike mostly rest, train and then fly across the Atlantic, ahead of what for many of them ends up being a three-month trip to Europe that doesn’t end until after Wimbledon. Given the lack of success on the surface on the men’s side, any U.S. ATP Tour player with a longer-term injury concern (like Taylor Fritz, who is managing knee tendonitis) is likely to pick the terre battue as their layoff period. Ben Shelton’s triumph at the Munich Open this past Sunday was the biggest win for an American man on clay since Andre Agassi won the Italian Open — in 2002.

The Madrid Open also has some baked-in challenges from the sport’s calendar. Like the Canadian Open, it’s an ATP Masters and WTA 1000 event ahead of a Grand Slam on the same surface. The Canadian Open, a hard-court event played in Toronto and Montreal because neither city has a venue big enough to house both tours at once, starts four weeks before the U.S. Open. The Madrid Open starts four weeks before the French Open.

But both tournaments have another 1,000-level event between them and the Grand Slam for which they are a preparation. The Cincinnati Open follows the Canadian Open; the Italian Open follows the Italian Open.

Given how physical the sport has become, players who can afford to skip a tournament without the loss of money and rankings points that comes with it can be wary of playing two events of this size back to back right before a Grand Slam. The back-to-back-to-back lineup carries an increased risk of injury. According to two people briefed on discussions, who were not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing internal plans, the tours plan to look at the timing of the events as part of an ongoing effort to streamline and optimize the prize money, rankings and schedule ahead of the 2028 season. The WTA Tour announced a council devoted to optimizing its calendar in February.

Then there are the conditions. Madrid sits more than 2,000 feet above sea level, and the weather can be plenty hot and dry, though cooler at night. Tennis balls fly faster through the air the thinner and drier it gets, and the Madrid Open has historically been more favorable to big-serving players than its clay-court cousins.

“It’s a different sort of clay court,” said Brian Garber, the coach of Ethan Quinn, the rising American.

If preparation for the French Open is the primary goal, a player choosing between Madrid and Rome would have an easy decision, and Madrid would not come out on top. The Italian Open is a much closer facsimile in terms of elevation and weather, and it comes without a potential three-week gap of no serious match practice in helpful conditions.

In addition, the Madrid Open has a reputation among players and coaches as being a tough place to get extended time for practice courts. Organizers have scrambled in recent years to add additional courts to accommodate the tournament’s shift to a two-week event with 96 players in each of the main draws, 48 in each of the qualifying draws, and 32 teams in each doubles event.

Real Madrid’s famous soccer stadium, the Santiago Bernabéu, will install a court for the biggest stars to get acclimatized away from prying eyes, thanks to a quirk in the La Liga team’s fixture schedule. This is in keeping with the event’s experimental streak: It is one of the most creative from a media perspective, offering live streams on Twitch and more complete highlights than most tournaments in its class.

Jannik Sinner, the world No. 1 who has won four consecutive ATP Masters 1000 tournaments going back to last season, generally doesn’t have much trouble finding a practice court. He’s never been past the quarterfinals in Madrid, so he has something of a personal mission that he spoke of in an interview on the tournament’s website.

“I have to try to figure out how to play on this surface and in Madrid,” he said. For the tournament, just being there might be enough.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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