World No. 1 Novak Djokovic weighs in as to whether Madrid and Rome should be allowed to become 10-day tournaments, similar to that of the Masters events in Miami and Indian Wells, which are not Grand Slams.
“I heard of the possibility to get 10 days,” he said. “They are both big tournaments and the majority of the top players live in Europe and so you want to spend more time around here. But it’s complicated because the schedule is structured in a certain way and so changing the schedule means sacrifice on the other parts. If you change another tournament suffers. But I am convinced that there is room for improvement in the schedule. I feel that there is sometimes too much of a conservative approach in the identity of the sport and the tradition which is long standing and there is that tradition that we nurture, but times are changing and we have to make changes.”