Mardy Fish has a lot of experience on the ATP Tour, having been a professional tennis player for 15 years until 2015.
Fish won a number of titles during that period, including an Olympic silver medal, and reached a career-high singles ranking of world number seven.
Since then, Fish has captained the USA Davis Cup team and also plays golf to a high level.
Despite no longer being an active player on the ATP Tour, Fish still sometimes voices his opinions on current ongoings in the sport.
Mardy Fish calls out four things he does not like in tennis in 2025
Fish expressed some of those views on the most recent episode of Tennis Channel’s Second Serve show.
During this conversation, Fish was asked to name something that he did not like about the current state of tennis in 2025.
The 43-year-old did not hold back in his response, with Fish actually going onto criticize four things about tennis at the moment.
Fish particularly expressed his dislike for the shot clock, that counts down from 25 seconds after each point ends.
“I don’t like the coaching aspect during play, tennis is such a unique game that when we leave the locker room we are all by ourselves,” said Fish. “You know mano a mano, gladiator-ish non-contact sport right. So, I do not like the in-match coaching.
“The schedule, I am so jealous of the golfers, because they get to play the West Coast swing and then the East Coast swing, and it’s just like the Florida Swing. Like how we start and how we travel on kind of a yearly basis is just like crazy.
“I can’t stand the shot clock or whatever the point clock, I can’t stand it. It came out at the end of my career and all I did was look at the shot clock, like that’s all I did. “‘Do I even have time to get my towel, like it’s a hundred degrees in July, like do I even have time to get my towel?’ it’s just so stupid, I don’t like that one. I hate what they did to Davis Cup, I hate it, they killed it.”
Fish is not the only person to call out scheduling and the Davis Cup, with Andy Roddick also critical of both things.
Mardy Fish explains what he would change about the Davis Cup
Fish became the USA Davis Cup captain in January 2019 after taking over from Jim Courier, leaving his role four years later after some disappointing results.
When expressing his disapproval of the current Davis Cup format, which Lleyton Hewitt also does not like, Fish was asked if he would prefer it to be every two years like golf’s Ryder Cup.
This is something that Fish admitted he liked the sound of and looked back on some of his greatest memories as a player on the USA Davis Cup squad.
“I would love that, like a Ryder Cup type format where you get all the top players to play,” said Fish. “Maybe qualifying one year and then the actual event the next year or something like that and space it out.
“I just felt like we’d have three ties, we’d go all over the world, we’d lose in the semis and then it was okay, because our next tie was in two months and it would just start over again. Eventually the losses didn’t sting you know like they should right, because you just have another one in like two, three months, you’re starting that all over again.
“We need to go back to home-and-away ties, that was just the greatest thing. The greatest thing in tennis for me was playing an away tie in Madrid in a bull ring, or in Bogota in a bullring.
“We played in Sevilla in a soccer stadium in ’04, like just some iconic venues. Plaza de Toros in Madrid, you know like the most famous bullring in the world, like and we played Davis Cup there right in the middle and it was awesome. You know and we lost all that, and it stinks.”
The Davis Cup have changed its format again in 2025, increasing the number of home-and-away ties like Fish wants, but still has the Finals in one host location at the end of each year.
This year the Davis Cup Finals will be held in Bologna, with two-time defending champions Italy hosting the event.
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