Mauresmo on Evening Combat: Stars and Match-Ups Matter

By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Monday, June 10, 2024
Picture credit score: AP

Roland Garros pulled the plug on ladies’s night time classes this 12 months.

Evening sightlines might not change dramatically subsequent 12 months both, mentioned Roland Garros event director Amélie Mauresmo.

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In her post-tournament presser, Mauresmo was requested why all Roland Garros night time classes featured males’s matches and no ladies’s matches.

Corridor of Famer Mauresmo mentioned because the event solely schedules one match at night time, the choice comes down to 2 main components:

1. Does the match function a star participant who can fill Court docket Philippe Chatrier stadium?

2. Will the match be compelling and the way lengthy will it final?

“Nicely, we solely have one match, and we now have constraints given the time it takes to play a match,” Mauresmo instructed the media in Paris. “I repeat what I mentioned final 12 months. First, we now have the large names that we’re searching for. We’re searching for the perfect gamers to play at night time within the night.

“Then the time that the match will final, that is what we try 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 needed to have solely males taking part in at night time.”

You possibly can perceive why event 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—significantly 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 probably the most pulsating matches of the event and spanned two hours, 57 minutes.

Some gamers, together with Daniil Medvedev, steered host broadcaster Amazon dictates, or least performs a serious function, in night-session scheduling selections.

Former Wimbledon winner Mauresmo shot down ideas that Amazon requested for a ladies’s night time match replying “No, no, no. Under no circumstances.”

So what is the answer?

Mauresmo mentioned the event has thought of going to 2 night-session matches, because the US Open does at Arthur Ashe Stadium, nevertheless because of the notoriously tardy Parisian fan base, she suggests it might imply 1000’s of empty seats initially, which creates one other problem.

“We requested ourselves the questions two years in the past,” Mauresmo mentioned. “We thought perhaps two matches is one thing to be thought of, however given the tradition we now have in Paris, folks do not come at 7:00 p.m. on the stadium.

“Subsequently, we’d produce other issues to face then if we had two matches.”

Requested how Roland Garros can stop 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 at present, properly, I am not going to provide the miracle answer,” Mauresmo mentioned. “I am not going to be sharing the concepts we have been enthusiastic about or I have been enthusiastic about. We’ve to debate this. We’ve to debate. We’ve to respect sports activities, but additionally the individuals who work for operations.

“And naturally we’re not happy with what we noticed on Friday for the second semi. It should be one of many subjects, not the one subject, however one of many many subjects that we are going to be debriefing.”

Picture credit score: AP