Exclusive: French Open tournament director Amelie Mauresmo addresses lack of women's matches in night sessions
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Updated 05/06/2023 at 07:28 GMT
Tournament director Amelie Mauresmo has addressed the lack of women’s matches in the night sessions of the French Open in an exclusive interview with Eurosport. Sunday's match between Sloane Stephens and Aryna Sabalenka was the first women's late match to be played on Court Philippe-Chatrier. Mauresmo admitted "choices aren’t easy to make". Stream the 2023 French Open live on discovery+
Stephens v Sabalenka - French Open highlights
Tournament director Amelie Mauresmo has addressed the lack of women’s matches in the night sessions of the French Open.
The competition was a week old when the first women’s match – Aryna Sabalenka v Sloane Stephens – finally took centre stage on Court Philippe-Chatrier as the late match.
The scheduling has created plenty of debate, with Eurosport expert Mats Wilander describing the situation as “ridiculous”.
Last year's Wimbledon runner-up Ons Jabeur also questioned why the French Open did not have two night matches like other Grand Slams.
Speaking exclusively with Eurosport’s Tim Henman and Barbara Schett in the Cube studio, two-time Grand Slam champion Mauresmo addressed questions around the matches chosen for the night sessions.
“Ons [Jabeur] is right. The fact that we’ve only had one women’s match at night here makes it quite different to the US Open and Australian Open," Mauresmo said.
“The choices aren’t easy to make and you have to take a lot of things into consideration. Tonight is the perfect match to promote women’s tennis and I look forward to these girls giving us a big show and a big fight.
“We definitely talked about it [having two night matches] and there was a debate around the men’s matches v women’s matches in the evening.
"There are a few things I wanted to avoid - I don’t think we can put five matches on Philippe-Chatrier in the whole day. So, it would mean we would have only two matches in the day and two in the evening for evening ticket holders which would start at six or seven o’clock.
"I don’t think the crowd will be in their seats at seven o’clock. In Paris, people leave their work pretty late so to have them seated at 7.30 in the stadium is quite a challenge, so we wanted to address that.
“If we put five matches for the day and night sessions, we don’t want to finish at three o’clock in the morning like what happens somewhere else. It’s not perfect or ideal but these are the two main reasons we don’t want to have two matches on the night sessions.
“We also always keep two women’s and two men’s matches on Chatrier which is very important to us.”
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'Anti-climax' for comeback queen Stephens as Sabalenka takes first set
Speaking about the scheduling of the night matches, Eurosport’s Henman said: “I think it’s massively valuable [having a former player as director] as she can understand all the different aspects players go through at a Grand Slam.
“It’s easy for people on the outside to just be thinking it’s all about the match court but no, it’s not. It’s about hotels, transport, practise, food on-site and all the different elements. She really has the knowledge and expertise to make these improvements.”
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