By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Monday, June 10, 2024
Picture credit score: AP
Roland Garros pulled the plug on girls’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 girls’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 characteristic a star participant who can fill Courtroom Philippe Chatrier stadium?
2. Will the match be compelling and the way lengthy will it final?
“Nicely, we solely have one match, and we’ve 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’ve the large 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 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’ve to make selections. That is why this 12 months we wished to have solely males taking part in at night time.”
You may perceive why event organizers wouldn’t desire a 68-minute blow-out that world No. 1 Iga Swiatek unleashed on Jasmine Paolini within the ultimate 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 ultimate set saving match level to edge Naomi Osaka within the second spherical was one of the vital 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 strategies that Amazon requested for a girls’s night time match replying “No, no, no. Under no circumstances.”
So what is the resolution?
Mauresmo mentioned the event has thought-about going to 2 night-session matches, because the US Open does at Arthur Ashe Stadium, nonetheless as a result of notoriously tardy Parisian fan base, she suggests it might 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, individuals 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 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 the moment, nicely, I am not going to provide the miracle resolution,” Mauresmo mentioned. “I am not going to be sharing the concepts we have been serious about or I have been serious about. Now we have to debate this. Now we have to debate. Now we 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 will be one of many matters, not the one matter, however one of many many matters that we’ll be debriefing.”
Picture credit score: AP
