Elena Rybakina rips the Miami Open for scheduling issue

Elena Rybakina lost the Miami Open final to Danielle Collins and then seemingly made excuses blaming her loss on conditioning and other concerns, but while she did give passing praise to Collins, mostly she blamed external issues. She does not have a history of being a sore loser, but one could argue she came across that way after losing the Miami Open. She might just say she lost and move on to the next event.

But Rybakina did not blame the final loss on the tournament, but she also felt like almost her entire run in Miami was nearly torpedoed by bad management. A couple of her early matches were very late and then she had to come back to play earlier in the day. Of course, some of that might have been weather-related which would have been out of organizers' control.

Part of the problem was that Rybakina was also having normal meetings during the day and she had to get up early for those. One could point out to the player that she could have skipped a meeting or two to get more rest for the matches, which were, of course, the most important thing. Daniil Medvedev did not blame his loss at the Australian Open, for instance, on all the late matches he was forced to play leading up to the final.

Elena Rybakina has strong thoughts about scheduling at the Miami Open

The Kazakh player said in her post-match press conference after losing to Collins, "I definitely didn't feel 100 percent...The first games I played were late at night, at the end of the day, and I went to sleep around 2 or 3 in the morning. Then I had a few meetings during the day, so the program varied too much. It doesn't help for recovery. There were some very difficult challenges..."

To be fair, too many tournaments have matches going far too late into the night and then players are forced to play earlier the following day. This happens at Grand Slams where on the men's side best-of-five-set matches last late and even a day of recovery is too little. Instead, tournaments could be spaced out even more or matches held earlier in the day which would make later matches end earlier.

But the problem there is tennis events might be missing out on prime-time viewing. This is more about money than caring about players' health. While Rybakina might be making excuses for her loss, at least her argument is a valid one.

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