PARIS — French Open tournament director Amelie Mauresmo says there are no plans to change the format for night matches at Roland Garros but admitted the situation is not “ideal” as men’s singles matches dominate the prime-time slot on Court Philippe-Chatrier.
Tournament organizers have come under criticism again from players this year over their scheduling at Roland Garros. The night match slot — a separately ticketed event — has been solely men’s singles matches in 2025, following the trend of previous years. This has led to Ons Jabeur and Coco Gauff being among those questioning the scheduling.
French Tennis Federation president Gilles Moretton said earlier this week it was a choice “to put the better match … for the spectators [at night].” And Mauresmo has doubled down, saying the decision over which match gets the night slot is influenced by expected play time, with men playing best-of-five-set matches and women best-of-three.
“For the scheduling, night-session scheduling, nothing new under the sun as compared to the previous editions,” Mauresmo said Friday. “We have one single match per night session. It hasn’t changed. Accordingly, we won’t change everything again.
“The play time also is taken into consideration, potential play time, obviously because we can’t plan ahead, be it for women’s tennis or men’s tennis. But we have to take it into consideration the 15,000 spectators coming in for the night session. Since men’s tennis is played at the best-of-five sets, three sets will be played at a minimum. It’s complicated for us to do otherwise.”
Mauresmo added that this was not meant to indicate that the women were “not worthy to play at night.”
One suggestion, including by Gauff, was to change the night slot to two matches, but Mauresmo has shut this down.
Three matches are played on Chatrier for the day session — usually with a women’s singles match opening in front of barely full stands — and then one night match. The decision for which match goes in the night slot is decided between the FFT and broadcasters, while players also offer a preference.
“We decide to keep the three matches in the day,” Mauresmo said. “When you put those three matches, the easy way would be to have the two matches in the evening. Then we wouldn’t have this conversation.
“But in my opinion, if we don’t want to finish too late, we cannot have the five matches in the day. … If we have two matches in the night sessions, it doesn’t work in terms of how late the players are going to finish. That’s my opinions.”
Mauresmo said she understands the conflict of the situation.
“It’s not ideal,” she said. “We cannot check every box because we have many, many things to think when we are doing these choices.”
Source: espn.com