The Cincinnati Open quarter finals are upon us. The eight best players of the tournament so far will battle for the four semi-final spots during day and night sessions on August 15. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, former world No. 11 Anna Kalinskaya will have a very different answer if you ask her about the schedule. In fact, you don’t have to ask the quarterfinalist.
After a competitive 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-1 win that saw Kalinskaya come back after losing the first set against 12th seed Ekaterina Alexandrova, the 2025 Mubadala Citi DC Open finalist took to social media. The reason? The time, or lack thereof, between her Round 16 and semi-final clashes. “How can the WTA and tournament expect athletes to perform their best when the scheduling is this unfair?” asked Kalinskaya.
“After my match against Alexandrova, I got home from the site at 2:40 am and didn’t go to bed until 4 am,” Anna Kalinskaya revealed on her Instagram story. “I slept a bit and came to the site to practice. Then I get scheduled at 11 am for tomorrow’s match,” she added. The fact that she played during the round of 16 night shift, and the match lasted late into the night, meant she would get less rest ahead of the semi-final match.
“How does the tournament and WTA expect me to recover and continuously adjust my sleep pattern, which is one of the most important aspects of recovery? Seems a bit one-sided,” the Russian tennis star wrote on Instagram. While she and Swiatek have time to rest ahead of their semifinal clash, the 26-year-old has to squeeze in enough sleep and practice in a shorter time frame.
Anna Kalinskaya hits out at WTA & Cincinnati Open for her match being scheduled at 11 am tomorrow morning when she didn’t get to sleep until 4 a.m. after her 2:40 a.m. finish against Alexandrova
“How can the WTA and tournament expect
athletes to perform their best when the… pic.twitter.com/JLOHSrrz4J
— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) August 14, 2025
Naturally, the situation isn’t ideal, and Anna Kalinskaya isn’t the only one who’s noticed. ESPN analyst Brad Gilbert wrote about the quarter-final timing on August 13. “You don’t even have to look at the schedule and know Iga Pop on 1st at 11 am. Wonder if her team asks for that or just happens that way a lot,” Gilbert pondered on X. However, after Kalinskaya, many tennis fans have also voiced their opinion.
Fans stand with Anna Kalinskaya
While the 2023 WTA Challenger Tour title winner originally posted on Instagram, fans voiced their opinions across social media platforms. “Unfortunate. This happened to Ostapenko a few years ago at the US Open,” one fan commented on The Tennis Letter’s post on X. What was notable was the individual’s reference to Jelena Ostapenko’s post, which bore striking similarity to Anna Kalinskaya’s complaint.
“I think it’s really hard to recover from those night matches, because after beating world No. 1, I went to sleep at, like, 5:00 in the morning,” she wrote after losing to Coco Gauff at the 2023 US Open. What’s more? Ostapenko argued that even if an athlete gets enough sleep, going to sleep at dawn and the sleep cycle disruption mean they can’t recover properly.
“I thought today I was, like, going to wake up and feel better. But honestly, I didn’t really feel much better,” she added. And this is exactly what Anna Kalinskaya highlighted in her Insta story. many other fans argued. “Sleep is key for peak performance, and Kalinskaya’s point hits hard! Scheduling matches so quickly after a late finish isn’t fair to the players,” wrote a tennis fan.
Image Credits: Anna Kalinskaya/Instagram
“The WTA and Cincinnati Open need to prioritize athlete recovery if they want top-level tennis. Players deserve better!” the netizen added. And there’s a good reason why so many agreed with Anna Kalinskaya’s sleep and recovery argument. Contemporary research has shown that a good night’s sleep can boost recovery, while bad sleep can have adverse effects on athletic performance.
A 2021 study in The Journal of Sports Sciences showed sleep loss impairs reaction time and decision-making in athletes by up to 20%. Now that can be the difference between winning and losing a match. “I’m so confused how we have an entire extra week to make scheduling more comfortable, and we are still not getting it. Who is in charge???” one frustrated fan added.
What’s more? One fan explained how even Iga Swiatek spoke against the WTA’s scheduling. “This happened to Iga once or twice. Iga made it well known she would prefer to play in front of no one than screw up her bedtime or other routines,” wrote the fan. While Swiatek didn’t complain about the schedule of a specific tournament, she did call out the frequency of contests.
“For me, I think the scheduling is super intense. It’s too intense. There’s no point for us to play, like, over 20 tournaments in a year,” the 2025 Wimbledon champion said in her pre-tournament press conference. “Iga plays very few matches at night, when most people have the opportunity to watch,” the fan added, tying into Brad Gilbert’s post. Yet what do you think of Anna Kalinskaya’s post about the Cincinnati Open schedule? Tell us in the comments.
The post Calls Mount Against Cincinnati Open as Anna Kalinskaya Issues Complaint Over Scheduling Against Iga Swiatek: “Unfortunate” appeared first on EssentiallySports.
