AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 16, 2026

Stefanos Tsitsipas

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Stefanos, how are you feeling about the season, about the year coming up?

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: I'm excited for the year to start. Look, another first year, another opportunity, another year of fresh, new perspectives and new goals in my mind.

You know, every year brings new ideas. Every year brings new goals and aspirations. I think it's great opportunity to test myself. Hopefully healthy 2026 where I can test myself all the way without any doubts of whether I can perform or not and not being unsure about being able to play in-a-row matches.

I'm grateful so far to all of my doctors that have done an incredible job getting me back on court, to my team who has been persistent and believing in the process. I would like to thank these people over the last couple of months who have allowed me to get back to my original shape again.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. I'm curious, just what is your level of sureness and I guess certainty, and I guess confidence in your body right now, particularly after the first few weeks that you were able to play matches?

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: I'm enjoying tennis. When I see myself in a condition like that. I enjoy tennis whether it goes well or it doesn't. At least I have some sort of feedback. I know what didn't work out, and now I can go into the next match knowing that I should try and avoid these things and I should try and focus more on these things.

When you are injured, you don't even have that feedback, because you're just, like, barely making the court to try and play a match. There are different types of concerns that hits you when you are in that type of situation.

And being myself, feeling like myself, and really seeing that I'm actually progressing with my game, I know Adelaide didn't go well last week, but I'm still pretty optimistic, and I feel good about my game. A loss like that is not going to deteriorate me or make me feel worse about something.

I thought it was a great opportunity to try and test myself a little bit more, but it's great having match like this, because I'm getting feedback out of my game and seeing myself consistently playing week after week without any concerns or without any problems. It allows me also to enjoy the game more and just be enthusiastic about a year like the year we have this year.

Q. In terms of your body, your back, that felt good?

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: So far, yes. So far there are no issues. I don't see any problems there. I just hope it stays like that.

Q. How much of last year do you think was sort of mental issues with the motivation that you talked about trying to find, but how much of it was physical? Because a back is a really hard thing to deal with. I imagine the two are related. If you're not feeling good physically, it affects you mentally, but...

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: It affects you always. Spinal injuries scientifically are proven that they affect the brain too. You can look it up.

I've done a lot of research on it. Spinal injuries are not funny at all. The spine in general is the most sensitive area of your body, so if that's affected, it can really have an effect on you mentally too.

I feel like if you don't have a healthy mind, it affects your mind, and if you don't have a healthy mind, also physically you're struggling. Your body starts collapsing too when you are mentally not well. Especially when you're an athlete of that caliber, where you need to be consistent in your work day in and day out, and you have to show up on court every day fresh and with a willingness to, like, be ready to sacrifice a lot of things in order to make your dream come true, these type of things have a serious, massive effect on your everyday life.

Seeing myself in a situation like that, I don't even -- honestly, I don't even, I reached a point where I don't even prioritize results anymore. I don't even care about results. Results don't even matter to me. What matters is training properly and not feeling pain and not being bothered by anything.

I was kind of expecting that results don't come, because when you're in a mental state like that, results are the least important thing in that particular moment. You don't even consider winning tournaments, because you are just barely breaking through, you know?

Q. In this year you don't need to defense too much points in this Australian Open. Maybe you could play with less pressure or anything like that. How do you describe your goals for the next two weeks? Is it about to play against some good names or have some great matches or just to feel good when you are on court?

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: I want to be able to feel competitive when I enter the court, to be able to compete against any player. That's my main focus and goal.

I'm not looking for big, super-duper things on court. I just want to go out there, compete, enjoy the competition, enjoy the competitive aspect of the game where, you know, you have players go back and forth on each other and kind of fall in love with that process of being competitive and allowing myself to get into that spirit and mood and seeing what that brings out of my game, you know? These are the type of things that I'm focused right now.

Q. Did you tailor your fitness routine over the last sort of six months to build your body into a place and do things differently so that it can withstand what the tennis season does to a human body? If so, what is it about the fitness that is a little different?

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: There are just so many things that just kind of click to my mind right now when you mention that stuff. My body is a fortress and is the most important thing in the world.

If I'm not able to have a healthy body and a healthy mind, then everything else comes secondary. That's where I've peaked in my tennis career when my body and my mind were aligned and healthy. That's when I have done the best results. That's when I've had the most amount of fun on the tennis court is when those things came together.

There are a lot of serious concerns with the tour, and I'm sure a lot of players have spoken about those things. It's important to address those things, and I'm not someone to complain, because I love the ATP Tour. I love what ATP Tour offers to us players and the opportunities it gives us, but it's just way -- the schedule is way too saturated.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to say that. I'm sure the ATP, if they try a little bit more, they can make it so where we can still play a lot of tournaments and play a lot of weeks out of the year, but have it a bit more balanced.

I don't think it's a coincidence that so many players were injured in 2025, and there is a statistic that I saw. I think we haven't had a year like that with so many retirements. You probably know it better than I do, but I saw somewhere online a statistic that mentioned a lot of retirements this year.

I personally believe it's a direct correlation to what the tour is doing to us. I don't think it's accidental that this happened this year. Masters 1000s are way too long. I think 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 little tiny adjustments to make it work.

Q. Judging from Gaudenzi's comments at the end of the year, it doesn't seem like they want to reduce the Masters 1000s, the two-week ones. Given how the rules are now, how do you think you'll go about trying to protect yourself against that? You said earlier that you're not so focused on just winning matches. Are you willing to, say, if you're not feeling as great, miss a certain tournament or schedule?

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: Certainly not. Certainly not. I don't want to come to a situation like that. Obviously there are a lot of sponsors and people behind me that believe in me and want me to compete and want me to be healthy. And so do I.

Look, if there's a burnout or if there's something that doesn't allow me to compete, of course I'm going to prioritize that, knowing that there are consequences on the line if I don't.

But I feel like the tour could definitely be more collaborative with the players to create a system that works for everyone. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. I'm not saying make all the Masters 1000s seven days. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is there's a formula and way to attract people and have people come and watch and keep it interesting. When you have Masters 1000s for 12 days -- that's how I see it from the outside as a player. I'm not interested in watching 12 days of a Masters 1000. I want to probably make it max ten days. If you want a show, make it a ten-day tournament. People are engaged the whole time. People don't lose focus.

When you make tournaments and turn them into marathons, not everyone is going to follow. I also say that from the perspective, I have people that are watching and following tennis from the outside that are not playing, and the feedback they give me is exactly the same that I'm giving myself. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening.

Bercy, for example, is one of the great examples. You get the tournament done in seven days, and everyone is excited. Everyone is watching the tennis. Everyone is following the tennis. There's a lot of good matches in a short period of time. It's a success the way Bercy does it, the way Monte Carlo does it. These are great tournaments to watch.

Again, there is a formula to do it. It's just making sure the players are aligned and we're all part of the system and not pushed away from the system, you know? We want to make this work, too.

Q. When this was implemented, I remember you did an interview for the OneVision thing.

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: Correct.

Q. Clearly now that you've seen it in action, your perspective has changed. You know what it's about.

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: My perspective has definitely changed. You're absolutely right.

Q. Did you feel like maybe when it was implemented, was it misleading in a way? Did you feel like you didn't get the full picture and information?

STEFANOS TSITSIPAS: Perhaps misleading. I wouldn't attack anyone on it. I thought of it a different way completely back then. I thought prize money is going to be increased because we're going to be playing more, because when you're obviously put to play more, you're expecting a much higher prize money on the service that you provide. You're a professional tennis player.

I was to find out later that it hasn't really changed dramatically from having that change. Of course, there's profit-sharing, which is great, and I think it's very fair that this has been applied, but the way that I thought of it initially was completely different to what I got later on.

I wouldn't say misleading, because I don't think that's what they want to do to the players, but maybe not enough clarification on a particular thing.

I remember at first when I made that first interview with OneVision, yes, I was completely on board. Once I got to see it implemented and I was part of the system, I immediately became less and less of a fan of it.