Yannick Noah in the spotlight for the 40th anniversary of his title, advanced nights, the public admitted to training for the greatest: tournament director Amélie Mauresmo presented the new features of the 2023 edition of Roland-Garros on Friday.
The charity day organized on Saturday, on the eve of the first day of the tournament, is renamed “Yannick Noah Day” and a fresco in his image recalling the player but also the person will be unveiled the next day, inside the stadium. In addition, other surprises around the last Frenchman to have won the tournament are planned but have not yet been revealed.
On the occasion of the third edition with night sessions, the organizers of the tournament tried to solve a number of problems related to the late hour of the end of the matches, for the players as well as for the public. From 8:00 p.m., a show will warm up the public at the Philippe-Chatrier court “and the first point will be played at 8:30 p.m.” instead of 9:00 p.m. in the past, assured Mauresmo. On the other hand, if the meetings last more than four hours, despite discussions, it appeared that it was “not possible for the RATP” to modify its timetables for the last metros. “It will be the same for the Olympics next year,” insisted Mauresmo.
The night programming last year, the first edition with an evening audience after a year under curfew due to Covid-19, had also posed a problem with the posters, with only one women’s match during the ten night sessions. There will be eleven from this year since the first Sunday, May 28 in 2023, is added. Nothing has changed this year, Mauresmo believing that it “would be a mistake” to establish a quota for women’s matches for these evenings.
The tournament director also underlined the popular enthusiasm for the qualifying week, which precedes the start of the tournament. The qualifications represent “enormous potential”, she estimated, explaining that the training sessions of the best players would be open to the public on the Philippe-Chatrier court during this week. As for the endowment, it is “being finalized, but will rather increase, for an organizational budget of around 300 million euros”, explained the director.