By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Monday, June 10, 2024
Photograph credit score: AP
Roland Garros pulled the plug on girls’s night time classes this yr.
Night time sightlines could not change dramatically subsequent yr both, mentioned Roland Garros match 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 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 elements:
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?
“Effectively, we solely have one match, and we’ve constraints given the time it takes to play a match,” Mauresmo informed the media in Paris. “I repeat what I mentioned final yr. First, we’ve the massive names that we’re searching for. We’re searching for the most effective 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’ve to make decisions. That is why this yr we wished to have solely males taking part in at night time.”
You may perceive why match organizers wouldn’t desire a 68-minute blow-out that world No. 1 Iga Swiatek unleashed on Jasmine Paolini within the last as the only real 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 last set saving match level to edge Naomi Osaka within the second spherical was probably the most pulsating matches of the match and spanned two hours, 57 minutes.
Some gamers, together with Daniil Medvedev, advised host broadcaster Amazon dictates, or least performs a significant function, in night-session scheduling choices.
Former Wimbledon winner Mauresmo shot down solutions that Amazon requested for a girls’s night time match replying “No, no, no. By no means.”
So what is the answer?
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 may imply hundreds of empty seats at the beginning, which creates one other subject.
“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’ve in Paris, folks do not come at 7:00 p.m. on the stadium.
“Due to this fact, we’d 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 right this moment, nicely, I am not going to provide the miracle answer,” Mauresmo mentioned. “I am not going to be sharing the concepts we have been interested by or I have been interested by. We now have to debate this. We now have to debate. We now have to respect sports activities, but additionally the individuals who work for operations.
“And naturally we’re not glad 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’ll be debriefing.”
Photograph credit score: AP
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