ATP chief Gaudenzi lays blame for player fatigue on Davis Cup

The president of the ATP admitted on Thursday that the men's tennis close season is too short but blamed the lack of time off for tired players on the Davis Cup.

Players have lamented the longer, more draining ATP calendar, in particular after the remodelling of the tour's top-tier Masters 1000 tournaments into two-week events.

In September Carlos Alcaraz said that the schedule is "going to kill us", but Andrea Gaudenzi said the Davis Cup Finals, the knockout stage of which gets under way later this month, was a key culprit for player fatigue.

"When I was young the Davis Cup final was between two teams, this season there were 50 players called up for the final stages," Gaudenzi told reporters at the ATP Finals in Turin.

"Players don't have enough time to relax their bodies."

Gaudenzi called the Masters 1000 tournaments "premium products" as they always feature the world's top 10 players and said that a decision on a new event, which will most likely be held in a Gulf nation, will not be made before 2028.

He also said that players could pick and choose their tournaments as they are "freelancers" and launched a jibe at them being "tempted to play in well-paying exhibition tournaments" like October's Six Kings Slam in Ryad.