Iga Swiatek: It’s Not Healthy Physically And Mentally To Play Late At Night

Following an early-morning 3am finish for Elena Rybakina in Canada, many players on the WTA are not happy players are having to compete at that late an hour.

Iga Swiatek met the press yesterday at the Cincinnati Masters, and she asked the WTA if fans were even watching matches that late into the night past 10pm. But the WTA has yet to get back to her with any data.

She added that playing and finishing so late is not going to help the players.

“We should kind of focus more on what is healthy for players because we have to compete every week, the tour is like so intense and with travel and not actually having like even two days of calm and not working that it would be nice in the future to focus more on the players especially next year when there are going to be more and more mandatory tournaments, and more longer tournaments.

“So I understand the business side but still I didn’t get any like specific information if it actually makes sense but for sure it’s not healthy to play at that hour.

“This is something we should totally work on because we’re gonna have more and more players that are like burned out.

“Playing at these hours is not healthy for sure physically, mentally.”

Rybakina wasn’t played either finishing so late in Montreal.

“It’s the first time and hopefully the last time because I think it’s been a little bit unprofessional,” Rybakina said. “I cannot say really the tournament because I think that the most important is the WTA here.

“Leadership a little bit weak for now, but hopefully something is going to change because this year it was many situations which I cannot really understand.

“We finished at 3. Well, I showered, did some stretching a little bit, went back to the hotel. I think I fell asleep at 5. Yeah, I mean, I woke up at 10, and then it was impossible to sleep. So, yeah, it definitely was not enough time to recover.

“The worst thing is that it’s not about this tournament. It’s going to be not easy to recover for the next two weeks.”

The world No. 1 Swiatek will have another day off before likely taking the court Wednesday in Cincinnati. Rybakina will also be scheduled for Wednesday.

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