Canada Open Tennis: A Masters Event in Crisis Before It Even Starts
By Sorin Nechita - https://www.flickr.com/photos/sorinn/3848837402/in/photostream, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15433157
The 2025 Canada Open Masters 1000 ATP and WTA tournaments kick off in less than a week — and it’s already unraveling.
Sinner, Alcaraz and Djokovic out of Canada Open
Look at the carnage, and it’s only Monday.
- No. 1 Jannik Sinner
- No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz
- No. 5 Jack Draper (also skipping Cincinnati)
- No. 6 Novak Djokovic
Add in Sebastian Korda (33), Jordan Thompson (36), Hubert Hurkacz (38) — and likely Grigor Dimitrov — and you’ve got a Masters 1000 field that’s crumbling by the day.
And before anyone shrugs at Novak’s absence, let’s be clear: he hasn’t played the Canada Open since 2018. At some point, you have to ask—why do the biggest names keep skipping this tournament?
The answer isn’t complicated.
The ATP and WTA calendars are cooked.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to hold two 12-day-long Masters 1000s back-to-back just two weeks after Wimbledon was out of their mind.
And scheduling the Toronto final on the same day as the Cincinnati Masters begins? That’s not innovation — that’s negligence.
Players have been sounding the alarm for years. Now they’re voting with their feet.
Your current top seeds in Toronto?
- Alexander Zverev
- Taylor Fritz
- Lorenzo Musetti
- Ben Shelton
Solid players, yes. But this is supposed to be a Masters 1000 — not a lightly upgraded ATP 500.
Over in Montreal, the WTA side isn’t much healthier. Here are the names not coming to the 2025 Canada Open:
- Aryna Sabalenka
- Paula Badosa
- Ons Jabeur
- Sonay Kartal
- Qinwen Zheng
- Donna Vekić
The calendar is too long. The players are banged up and tired. And the fans are being shortchanged.
Toronto used to be a marquee event. Now? It feels like a glorified rest stop on the way to Cincinnati.
The players deserve better. The fans deserve more. And this calendar needs a hard reset — fast.
