Laura Robson has defended her Sky Sports colleague Tim Henman after the four-time Wimbledon semi-finalist claimed there is “too much irrelevant tennis”. Henman made his comments at the ATP Finals as the tennis season came to an end earlier this month.

Henman enjoyed an established career in tennis as the Briton reached the semi-finals of the French Open and US Open after his appearances in the last-four at the All England Club. He won the Paris Masters in 2003 and also appeared in two Indian Wells finals and one Cincinnati Masters showpiece match. But his remarks about the tennis calendar didn’t go down well.

“For me, there is too much irrelevant tennis at times in the calendar,” Henman explained. “When they talk about February, historically on the ATP Tour there have been 12 tournaments in four weeks in February and what does that mean when you have Jannik Sinner here, Carlos Alcaraz there, Alexander Zverev here and Novak Djokovic there?

“It doesn’t provide a clear narrative for the fan so certain weeks where there is no tennis is a good thing for everybody.”

Two-time Grand Slam winner Yevgeny Kafelnikov responded as he wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “You mean, ‘There is too much irrelevant exhibition tennis tournaments with lot of money, which has a negative effect on calendar’ Tim.”

And the Briton was slammed by some fans on social media, with @Dangacheru exclaiming: “What a load of rubbish. Scrap off the exhibitions first.”

Meanwhile, @AgyaaniBaaba explained: “Pretty disappointing take… The ‘irrelevant’ tournaments provide opportunities to upcoming players to become relevant tomorrow and fans in a lot of places to be relevant.”

And @tc_carbonell penned: “Bad day in the office Tim. There’s no irrelevant tennis…we were all irrelevant before you get to the best tournaments.”

Henman’s comments came after ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi stated: “It’s a difficult problem to solve because if a player is attracted by money and plays in a lower category, which happens often, if you look at the date and the behaviour of how they play, they often play a lot also in the lower categories, and they also play exhibitions outside of our system, and they play team events.”

And Robson defended the former British No. 1 as she posted a clip of their interview to X and wrote: “Would be great to post the 20 minute interview with Andrea Gaudenzi so people can see what we are responding to in this chat.”