By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Monday, June 10, 2024Picture credit score: AP
Roland Garros pulled the plug on girls’s night time periods this 12 months.
Night time sightlines might not change dramatically subsequent 12 months both, mentioned Roland Garros match director Amélie Mauresmo.
King Carlos: Alcaraz Fights Off Zverev for First Roland Garros Crown
In her post-tournament presser, Mauresmo was requested why all Roland Garros night time periods featured males’s matches and no girls’s matches.
Corridor of Famer Mauresmo mentioned for the reason that match solely schedules one match at night time, the choice comes down to 2 major components:
1. Does the match characteristic a star participant who can fill Court docket Philippe Chatrier stadium?
2. Will the match be compelling and the way lengthy will it final?
“Properly, we solely have one match, and we now have constraints given the time it takes to play a match,” Mauresmo informed the media in Paris. “I repeat what I mentioned final 12 months. First, we now have the massive names that we’re in search of. We’re in search of the very best gamers to play at night time within the night.
“Then the time that the match will final, that is what we attempt to assure for the spectators within the night. However nothing’s engraved in stone. Issues can change. It is one single match that we play at night time, and due to this fact we now have to make decisions. That is why this 12 months we wished to have solely males enjoying at night time.”
You possibly can perceive why match organizers wouldn’t need a 68-minute blow-out that world No. 1 Iga Swiatek unleashed on Jasmine Paolini within the remaining as the only night time session match—notably since Mauresmo banned booze gross sales inside stadiums after Belgian David Goffin reported a fan spit at him.
Othe different hand, Swiatek’s spirited comeback from 2-5 down within the remaining set saving match level to edge Naomi Osaka within the second spherical was one of the crucial pulsating matches of the match and spanned two hours, 57 minutes.
Some gamers, together with Daniil Medvedev, recommended host broadcaster Amazon dictates, or least performs a significant position, in night-session scheduling selections.
Former Wimbledon winner Mauresmo shot down ideas that Amazon requested for a girls’s night time match replying “No, no, no. By no means.”
So what is the resolution?
Mauresmo mentioned the match has thought-about going to 2 night-session matches, because the US Open does at Arthur Ashe Stadium, nonetheless because of the notoriously tardy Parisian fan base, she suggests it might imply 1000’s of empty seats at first, which creates one other situation.
“We requested ourselves the questions two years in the past,” Mauresmo mentioned. “We thought perhaps two matches is one thing to be thought-about, however given the tradition we now have in Paris, folks do not come at 7:00 p.m. on the stadium.
“Subsequently, we might produce other issues to face then if we had two matches.”
Requested how Roland Garros can forestall the debacle of a half-empty stadium for the Alexander Zverev v. Casper Ruud males’s semifinal which got here on Friday after Carlos Alcaraz’s epic five-set win over Jannik Sinner, Mauresmo mentioned options are being mentioned.
“So as we speak, effectively, I am not going to provide the miracle resolution,” Mauresmo mentioned. “I am not going to be sharing the concepts we have been desirous about or I have been desirous about. We now have to debate this. We now have to debate. We now have to respect sports activities, but in addition the individuals who work for operations.
“And naturally we’re not happy with what we noticed on Friday for the second semi. It is going to be one of many subjects, not the one matter, however one of many many subjects that we are going to be debriefing.”
Picture credit score: AP
