MELBOURNE, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Stefanos Tsitsipas returns to Grand Slam tennis following a back injury that derailed the second half of his 2025 campaign and the former Australian Open runner-up said on Friday he was only focused on enjoying himself at Melbourne Park. The former world number three played two singles matches for Greece in the Davis Cup in September after his second-round exit at the U.S. Open a month earlier, before taking time off to recover from the niggling issue. Ahead of the year's opening major, where he reached the final in 2023, Tsitsipas said his goal was just to feel competitive again after managing only two match wins at the Grand Slams last year.
"I'm not looking for big, super-duper things on court," he said.
"I just want to go out there, enjoy the competitive aspect of the game where you have players go back and forth, and fall in love with that process ... seeing what that brings out of my game. "These are the type of things that I'm focused on right now," added Tsitsipas, who has slipped to number 33 in the rankings amid his injury struggles.
Tsitsipas said the governing body of men's tennis had to make changes to the tour schedule as too many players were retiring from matches and suffering injuries, highlighting the intensity of the ATP 1000 tournaments, many of which run to 12 days.
"There are a lot of serious concerns with the tour, and I'm sure a lot of players have spoken about those things," he said. "I'm not someone to complain, because I love the ATP Tour. I love what it offers to us players and the opportunities it gives us, but it's just (that) the schedule is way too saturated." ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi defended the crowded calendar in October, saying scheduling remains the players' choice and that the tour was working to set clearer incentives so the right number of matches are played across the season. "I don't think it's a coincidence that so many players were injured in 2025, and there's a statistic that I saw. We haven't had a year like that with so many retirements," Tsitsipas said. "I believe it's a direct correlation to what the tour is doing to us. I don't think it's accidental that this happened. Masters 1000s are way too long. "There's a formula that can be applied on that where you reduce a few days here and there, and you just have the perfect formula, just tiny adjustments to make it work."
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
