“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 US 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 US 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.”
