Miami Open tournament director James Blake has given his verdict on the highly criticised Masters 1000 events.
Last year was the seventh of Blake’s tenure as tournament director, with Aryna Sabalenka and Jakub Mensik winning the Miami Open titles.
The Miami Open was actually the first Masters 1000 tournament to be expanded to two weeks, which occurred in 1997.
Since then, many of these events have followed suit, drawing widespread criticism from the likes of Alexander Zverev, who has claimed no-one likes two-week Masters 1000 events.
Zverev is not the only player to have criticised two-week Masters 1000 events, and now Miami Open tournament director Blake has been asked for his opinion on the situation.
James Blake gives his verdict on two-week Masters 1000 events
While he is now the Miami Open tournament director, Blake is also a former world number four and twice reached the quarterfinals of the event he is now in charge of.
When appearing in the latest edition of The Changeover Podcast, Blake was asked for his verdict of the two-week Masters events.
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Despite being in charge of the Miami Open, Blake admitted that he is not a fan of them as a former player, but spoke about the benefits he can see as a tournament director.
“As far as the 12-day events, as a former player I don’t love them,” said Blake. “I don’t think it’s great, because I don’t think players…we talk all the time about shortening the schedule, we wish we could we could shorten the schedule.
“But also you want to be intentional about how we can shorten the schedule, and if you can play those Masters series in one week then at the end of the year you’re going to have a little bit more time instead of stretching them out over two days when you don’t really get time off.
“So if you’re [Jannik] Sinner or [Carlos] Alcaraz or [Alexander] Zverev and you’re playing deep into these events, you have those days off to get ready, but those aren’t really days off. It’s still a tournament day, so you’re still focussed, you’re still preparing for that, so you don’t have a real block of time to get off.
“So, I don’t think as many 12-day events as we have in the sport right now is as good for the players long term. But there’s trade offs in life, and I think if you tell that to the players, like okay we’ll take them all back to seven days then we’re also going to cut your prize money by 40%, I think a lot of them would say ‘You know, I’m okay with the 12 days’.
“So that’s just always the struggle and the wrestling match that they’re having well how much is it, because you can get more sponsorships, you can get more dollars into the event, more TV days for them when you’re doing those 12 day events, so you got to decide what’s more important…As a tournament director I love having 12 day events, but as a former player I understand that there’s concerns and the players don’t love as many 12 day events as we have right now.”
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James Blake says what will ‘never’ happen to Joao Fonseca again at the Miami Open
The schedule was not the only thing that drew criticism at the Miami Open earlier this year, with Joao Fonseca’s court changed at the last minute due to the mass of Brazilian supporters wanting to watch him.
When discussing the situation that led up to this decision, Blake revealed that Fonseca will never be scheduled away from the Stadium Court again.
“It was a very challenging day. The decision actually wasn’t that tough, because it was made for us by the fire Marshall,” explained Blake. “The fire Marshall actually came in and said ‘We can’t do this, we can’t have them out there’, because as you guys said there was rows of 15/20 people deep where if you left the Grandstand, two matches before he even came out if you left then you couldn’t get back in.
“So, if you’re a family of four and your kid needs to go to the bathroom, then all four of you need to leave and you can’t get back in. So they said ‘We can’t do this, we can’t have this going, it’s actually dangerous. It’s holding up traffic outside of it, we have to move him. Whether that’s take him off the schedule completely and play him tomorrow or if we can find a spot we have to put him in the Stadium’.
“So we just have to come up with how can we do this and still not anger the fans as much as we know the fans are going to be angry, because we know people paid for these tickets in Grandstand and they have to change to Stadium seats and get in.
“So we learned a lesson, I mean we all didn’t realize just how much a guy ranked 60 in the world was going to command that crowd, but we know now. He will never be on anything but Stadium in Miami, because the Brazilian fans come out in force there and they go crazy for him and we love that passion, but we just need him on Stadium.”
While the Miami Open will still be held over two weeks in 2026, Fonseca is unlikely to be involved in a similar situation this year.
The 2026 Miami Open will be held later this year, with the main draw taking place between March 17-29.
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