#player-withdrawals

#player-withdrawals

The World Baseball Classic, gearing up for its sixth iteration, is still trying to find its footing as a true, best-on-best international tournament. It wants to be the FIFA World Cup, but everything wants to be the World Cup and nothing is besides the World Cup. It would probably settle, right now, for being the Four Nations Face-Off: a respectable simulacrum of a tournament that makes a lot of money for its organizers and stumbles into some excellent late-stage games.

“Tennis is played 11 months out of the year. So, it is a grind for these players as is, but the expansion of the Masters 1000 to two-week events has actually made it worse,” said Gill Gross. “They're spending more days out of the year at tournaments, living in hotels, out of suitcases, living with the anxiety that they feel just in that tournament mode, instead of being at home.”