Ten Terrible Things In Tennis In 2025

In the second of his annual three-part review of the year, Martin Keady, our resident tennis historian, looks back at the worst things in the sport in 2025.

Ten Terrible Things In Tennis In 2025

1. Player Burnout  

Such has been the spate of injury, illness and sheer exhaustion at the end of 2025 that flies were starting to fall like tennis players. After the last Major of the year in New York, and especially on the Asian Swing in the autumn, it seemed that virtually every ATP and WTA tournament was badly affected by player withdrawal. Even the previously superhuman Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner began to feel the pressure of the new, super-intense tours.

The expansion of most Masters and WTA 1000 events from one week to two has undoubtedly been a factor, forcing yet more tennis into an already overcrowded schedule. Inevitably, something has had to give and increasingly it has been the players themselves. Perhaps the worst example of all was not so much a case of player burnout as player “crash and burnout”, with Holger Rune, who is probably still the most likely long-term contender to the “Sincaraz” duopoly, suffering a torn Achilles tendon in Stockholm in October. Rune faces long-term rehabilitation before he can get back to anywhere near his best. And tennis really must stop eating its young.

1. The Lack of Competitiveness In Men’s Tennis (Outside the Top Two)

If Alcaraz and Sinner share all the men’s Major Singles titles between them for a third year in succession, it will not only be a record but a damning indictment of almost every other male tennis player on the planet. The Big Three were at least a Trivalry, but currently no male player looks capable of becoming “The New Djokovic” and breaking up an utterly dominant duopoly, as Federer and Nadal were before the Serb’s full emergence.

Indeed, it is not just unlikely currently that anyone else will threaten Alcaraz and Sinner’s stranglehold on the sport’s greatest prizes but perhaps unlikely for the foreseeable future. In a recent BBC Tennis article that explicitly asked whether any other male tennis player could challenge Alcaraz and Sinner at the Slams, super-coach Patrick Mouratoglou was sceptical.

Significantly, he was not only sceptical about the chances of  established top-tenners such as Jack Draper and Taylor Fritz but about the chances of young new superstars like Joao Fonseca, who is only 19, and Jakub Mensik, who is only 20. As Mouratoglou said of probably the two best male young players under the age of 21: “They’re not ready at the moment to win a Slam, they are still so far away from the top two.” And so, it seems, is everyone else.

1. The Battle of the Sexes II

The glorified exhibition match between Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios, to give it the title and status that it deserves, is so pointless that it almost feels like an affront to refer to it. And yet it is happening and is likely to attract a considerable TV audience, especially in the tennis off-season. Nevertheless, it is likely to be the worst sequel since “Godfather III”.

The original Battle of the Sexes match between Billie-Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973, as retold in the 2017 film of the same name, was a genuinely historic sporting event in which BJK beat the self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig” who had openly mocked women’s tennis. By beating Riggs, BJK won almost everything, proving that women could beat men (or at least middle-aged men) and more importantly demonstrating that women’s tennis was as deserving of attention as men’s tennis.

By complete contrast, Sabalenka in 2025 has virtually nothing to win and everything to lose. If she does beat Kyrgios, who has barely played professional tennis since reaching the Wimbledon final in 2022, it will be seen as the defeat of a has-been. But if the world #1 should lose to a male player who is currently ranked outside the world’s top 600, it will only embolden the beliefs of all the 21^st-century Riggs, of whom, sadly, there is no shortage.

1. Jannik Sinner Withdrawing From The Davis Cup Finals

Obviously, the biggest controversy engulfing Jannik Sinner in 2025 was his three-month ban from the ATP Tour for two failed drugs tests in 2024. The second biggest controversy engulfing him in 2025 came later in the year, when he withdrew at late notice from Italy’s attempt to win a Davis Cup hat-trick. It was much smaller and much more localised than the first, but it was still a damning blow to the status of the Davis Cup and indeed to international team tennis in general.

The reason that Sinner’s withdrawal was so regrettable was that it felt like he was biting the hand that had once fed him, because it was in the Davis Cup finals in 2023 that he really emerged as the biggest – indeed, only – rival to Carlos Alcaraz. His Miracle in Malaga, when he beat Novak Djokovic twice in one day (in both singles and doubles), was the springboard for all the Majors that followed, as well as a successful Davis Cup defence in 2024.

Such is the current strength of depth in Italian men’s tennis that Flavio Cobolli was able to lead Italy to a “threepeat” last month. Nevertheless, Sinner’s late withdrawal from the competition that had helped to make him left a sour taste, and not just in Italy.

1. Still No Women In The French Open Night-Time Sessions

When Amelie Mauresmo achieved her career breakthrough as a player by reaching the 1999 Australian Open final against Martina Hingis, Hingis used homophobic language to describe the openly gay Mauresmo, infamously proclaiming: “She is half a man.” Such a comment was unacceptable at the time and is even more unacceptable now, more than a quarter of a century on.

However, if the gloriously elegant Mauresmo was certainly not “half a man” as a player, it is arguable that she is at least “half a male chauvinist pig”, à la Bobby Riggs, as an administrator. That is because of her continuing refusal as the tournament director of Roland Garros to schedule women’s matches for the night-time sessions. Ons Jabeur, for one, was so frustrated by this de facto banning of women from a high-profile slot that she wrote an open letter condemning Mauresmo for failing to support the female players who have followed in her wake. And she was right to do so.

In 2025, there is no good reason for not scheduling both men’s and women’s matches in all sessions equally, in Paris or anywhere else. Most tennis fans are fans of both men’s and women’s tennis, and the organiser of a Major, especially one who experienced so much hostility and vitriol herself when she was a player, should finally realise that.

1. The Decline of Alexander Zverev and Other “Former Next Genners”

History, even sporting history, moves fast. Consequently, the full emergence of Alcaraz and Sinner as “The Huge Two” of men’s tennis (a title befitting of the fact that they have separated themselves from the rest of men’s tennis even more comprehensively than The Big Three did) has come at the expense of “former Next Genners” like Stefanos Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev and most spectacularly of all Alexander Zverev.

Towards the end of the last decade, as Federer, Nadal and Djokovic finally began to show signs that they could not rule men’s tennis forever, Zverev was almost universally acknowledged as the young player most likely to replace them at the top of the game. However, he has proven to be even less successful against Alcaraz and Sinner, especially at the Majors, than he was against The Big Three, and increasingly it seems likely that he will never win the Major that his huge natural talent (and huge frame) had once made a real possibility.

Unless Zverev can somehow completely transform his game to make it more bold and attacking (and as he approaches 30, that is obviously unlikely), it is probable that he will end up in the group of “Best Players Never To Win A Major”, alongside the likes of Miloslav Mečíř, Tim Henman and David Ferrer.

1. Andy Murray’s First Coaching Job

Sometimes it’s best to start at the top – but sometimes it’s not. This time last year, Andy Murray had stunned the tennis world by agreeing to become Novak Djokovic’s coach just a few months after he had retired from playing. It seemed unlikely at the time, and aside from one extraordinary defeat of Carlos Alcaraz at the Australian Open in January it ultimately proved unworkable, to the extent that Murray and Djokovic parted company as coach and coachee within a few months.

Murray admitted to the BBC at the end of 2025 that he “probably didn’t get the results I would have liked” while he was working with Djokovic, but in retrospect it was always unlikely that he could transform an ageing Djokovic as he himself had been transformed in his youth (from Major contender to Major winner) by Ivan Lendl.

What will be really fascinating to see is whether Murray ever coaches anyone other than Djokovic. So far, since the split with his former rival he has shown infinitely more interest in improving his golf than in helping to improve another player. And with a large young family who he naturally wants to see grow up, it might be that Murray never returns to the coaching box, or at least not for a very long time.

1. The Match TieBreak In The French Open Men’s Singles Final

The 2025 Men’s French Open final was an instant classic. Unfolding over five sets and more than five hours, it was the first truly great men’s Grand Slam final of the post-Big Three era and comparable with the greatest matches of that era, notably the 2008 Wimbledon final between Federer and Nadal, and the 2012 Australian Open final between Nadal and Djokovic. However, there was one thing glaringly wrong with it and that was the match tiebreak.

The whole final was nerve-janglingly tight, with both men serving for the match and then being broken, with the exception of the match tiebreak. Alcaraz absolutely sprinted away with it, triumphing 10-2 in a display of dominance that was not in keeping with the rest of the match. As I wrote at the time, it would have been far better if Alcaraz and Sinner had kept playing until they were 12 games all in the final set, and then played a match tiebreak. If that had been the case, then Roland Garros 2025 might even have eclipsed Wimbledon 2008 or Melbourne 2012 as the greatest tennis match ever played. Instead, alas, it ended in the dampest and squibbiest of damp squibs.

1. The Scheduling of the Fed Cup and Davis Cup Finals

So much of the player burnout that was the worst problem in tennis in 2025 was due to the often absurd scheduling of the sport, especially the aforementioned decision to make Masters tournaments fortnight-long events. Unfortunately, such scheduling was not just limited to the ATP and WTA Tours but extended to the Fed Cup and Davis Cup finals.

With the Fed Cup finals, the problem is its scheduling within the tennis year. Having always been played at the end of the season, just like the Davis Cup, moving it to September inevitably feels like a foreshortening of the entire women’s season.

And with the Davis Cup finals, the problem is the scheduling within the finals themselves, such that two-time defending champion Italy had a whole day off before facing Spain, who had no such rest day, in the final. Italy might well have won the tournament anyway, especially as they were playing at home in Bologna, but the ridiculous and ridiculously unfair scheduling of the semifinals made their task considerably easier.

1. Novak Djokovic’s Chances of Winning a 25^th Major

And finally, there is the ongoing quest by Novak Djokovic to establish himself as statistically the most successful tennis player ever by winning the 25^th Major Singles title that would break his tie with Australia’s Margaret Court. However, all the events of 2025, and especially his three successive semi-final defeats to either Sinner or Alcaraz at Roland Garros, Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows, strongly suggested that he will never achieve his personal Holy Grail.

Throughout his career, indeed throughout his life, Djokovic has proven himself to be the master of the impossible, or at the very least the near-impossible. Having gone from war-torn Belgrade to become the best male tennis player in the world, in the process destroying the original (Federer-Nadal) duopoly in men’s tennis, it has often seemed that he is capable of anything on a tennis court. Now, however, he might finally have met his match in the impossibility stakes.

If Djokovic only had to beat one all-time-great player who is nearly half his age to win a 25^th Major, he might still have a chance of doing so. But of course he almost certainly has to beat two, in Alcaraz and Sinner, and that might just be an obstacle too great even for the GOAT to overcome.

Next time: Ten Things To Look Forward To In Tennis In 2026.