Carlos Alcaraz’s running complaint about the ATP’s calendar has picked up a heavyweight ally. Alexander Zverev, who will take the top of the rankings on 2 November when Jannik Sinner is displaced, used his press conference in Vienna this week to repeat a case he says he has been pushing for a decade.

“Improving it is relatively simple. As I’ve said many times, I think we should play two or three weeks less in the season and have more time,” Zverev told reporters at the Erste Bank Open, according to Tennis Majors.

The German used his own year-end congestion to illustrate it. A Davis Cup run that stretches close to December leaves barely a gap before players need to be on court in Australia in early January.

“If I go on vacation, I can basically fly straight from the vacation to Australia. At some point it’s nonsense,” he said at the same press conference.

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Nothing, in his telling, has moved in ten years of asking.

Alcaraz’s complaint from Shanghai

The context behind Zverev’s intervention is Alcaraz. The Spaniard returned from a four-and-a-half-month wrist injury this summer, and in an interview filmed for the Shanghai Masters’ own YouTube channel he had already raised the same alarm, speaking in the days after Sinner shut down the rest of his season with a knee injury.

“I would say one of the reasons we see the players who were getting injured, I think they’re pushing us too much out of the line sometimes to play a lot of tournaments, to play a lot of matches, and I think it’s going in the wrong direction,” Alcaraz said in that interview.

He urged ATP officials to pay closer attention to what was happening to players through the season.

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Zverev’s own January problem

Zverev has already used his incoming No. 1 billing to make a scheduling point in practice. He has ruled himself out of the mixed-team United Cup in January 2027 but will play for Germany at the Davis Cup finals, which run almost into December.

Playing both, he said, would mean a first competitive match in the Australian summer within days of a Davis Cup finish in Europe, a turnaround he described as impossible.

Zverev said players were voicing their dissatisfaction more openly than before and expected the pressure for change to keep rising.

His move to world No. 1 becomes official when the ATP rankings refresh on Monday, 2 November, with Sinner dropping from the top spot he has held since April.

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