Australian Open 2025: There really isn't much time off in the offseason for tennis players

If it seems as though the 2025 professional tennis year started pretty much immediately right after 2024 ended, that’s because that’s exactly what happens in a sport where the offseason really does not leave players much time to be “off.”

Actually, for tennis, 2025 began while the calendar still read 2024.

“I do, obviously, wish that the offseason was longer, 100%,” said 2023 U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff, who began her “year” by helping the American team win the United Cup title in Sydney, more than a week after that competition began on Dec. 27. “But it is what it is.”

When the Australian Open gets going Sunday morning in Melbourne (Saturday night EST), players will have tuned up by playing in various events that followed a period of practice and work in the gym that was longer for some than others.

“I wouldn’t say there is even an offseason anymore,” 2021 Wimbledon semifinalist Denis Shapovalov said. “The season is never-ending.”

For the record, last season officially and finally wrapped up for good on Dec. 22, when Brazil's João Fonseca won the ATP Next Gen Finals in Saudi Arabia. He was back on a court later in December for the Challenger Tour stop in Canberra, Australia — which he also won.

The golf season is similar, essentially running non-stop, without the multiple months off offered by team sports.

“For a long time, we (have been) fighting to have a longer offseason. To be healthy … you at least need a two-month offseason. So it would be great to finish a little bit earlier,” said Conchita Martinez, a former player who won the 1994 Wimbledon championship and is now the coach of Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva.

“For the health of the tour, for the health of the players," Martinez said, "maybe (the season) should be a little bit shorter.”

This is, to be sure, not a new concern.

Yet nothing seems to have changed. If anything, the problem is becoming more pronounced.

And to Martinez's point, the opening week of this season included two singles finals in which one player stopped playing — Naomi Osaka in Auckland, New Zealand, and Reilly Opelka in Brisbane, Australia — because of an injury concern (it's also likely they wanted to make sure not to push themselves too hard with the year's first Grand Slam tournament on the horizon).

That's why, as much as possible, the athletes try to find some down time before getting ready to ramp up for what's to come.

“I had 1½ weeks that I didn’t touch the tennis racket. I just threw it in my room. I didn’t want to see it again,” four-time major champ Carlos Alcaraz joked. “It was really helpful to disconnect a little bit.”

They say they view the time between seasons, however brief it might be, as an opportunity for a combination of rest and relaxation — the Maldives is a popular vacation spot, as a glance at player' social media makes clear — along with training and preparation, with an eye on trying to improve in some way.

“You take a bit of a break. But you need to get right back on the court and in the gym to get ready for Australia,” said Jasmine Paolini, the runner-up at the French Open and Wimbledon in 2024. “As soon as you can, you need to practice, but there isn’t a lot of time, so you have to figure out how to schedule things."

Ben Shelton, a big server who was a quarterfinalist at the Australian Open and U.S. Open two years ago, spent time on his return game this offseason. He was representing the United States at the Davis Cup in Spain in late November, then playing an exhibition match at Madison Square Garden in early December, before heading to his new home, Orlando, Florida, to get ready for January.

Unlike many players, he skipped any competition in the first week of 2025, instead opting to enter an event in Auckland this week before heading to Melbourne.

The mind-set, Shelton explains, amounts to: “Oh, I’m six weeks off; I’m not really ‘match tough’ right now."

Some fans wonder why he and others opt to participate in exhibitions at all, but players say those don't take the same sort of toll that a day-after-day tournament, or even every-other-day Slam event, does. Hard to argue with someone choosing to make a little extra money on the side, too.

And players make the case that no matter how much they can switch off in November or December, part of the issue is there are not many chances to do that during other months.

“Ideally we’d have a little bit more time. It’s such a short turnaround ... after such a long season. There’s not enough days to recover,” said Alexei Popyrin, an Australian who upset Novak Djokovic at last year's U.S. Open. “Taking time off to let your body rest might hinder the preparation, but at the end of the day, you need your body to be ready. The schedule is just so hectic throughout the year.”

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AP Sports Writer Brian Mahoney in New York contributed to this report.

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Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis