“We didn’t want to finish at two in the morning”: Roland-Garros director Amélie Mauresmo defended the format of evening sessions on Sunday with a single match, when two are scheduled at the Australian Open and the US Open. And the boss of the French lifting of the Grand Slam does not intend to deviate from this line. “That’s what we’re going to do beyond this year,” she said.
The formula chosen by Roland-Garros, with a single match scheduled from 8:15 p.m. for the 2023 edition – half an hour earlier than in 2022 – raises in particular the question of the very unbalanced distribution between male and female posters in the evening .
Sunday evening, the round of 16 between Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, world No.2, and American Sloane Stephens is the first women’s match to have the honors of the “night session” since the start of the Paris fortnight, after six first masculine posters.
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In 2022, only one evening session had been devoted to a women’s match. “We didn’t want, like the other Grand Slams, to finish at two, three, four in the morning”, justifies Mauresmo.
As for possibly advancing the schedule for the start of the session, the former world No.1 observes that “we are still addressing a rather Ile-de-France, Parisian public, a few foreigners too. But overall, the public comes to consume as you go to the theater or to a concert, so I do not believe in 7:00 p.m. with two matches”, she continues, acknowledging however “a lot of internal debate”. “I don’t think evening ticket holders arrive at 6:00 p.m., 6:30 p.m. in the stadium, exactly to be on the court at 7:00 p.m. and stay until I don’t know what time,” she adds.
At the Australian Open and the US Open, two matches are scheduled in the evening session, starting at 7:00 p.m. “It’s a new niche for us, recalls Mauresmo. There is real work being done.” As a reminder, Roland-Garros has only been offering “night sessions” since 2021.
