"It's complicated for us to do otherwise," Mauresmo justifies the absence of women's matches scheduled for evening sessions at Roland-Garros
Roland-Garros 2025 is well underway since Sunday. This edition has seen numerous tributes paid (to Nadal, Gasquet, Mahut, Garcia), but decisions regarding the evening scheduling on Court Philippe-Chatrier continue to spark debate.
Indeed, since the match between Aryna Sabalenka and Sloane Stephens two years ago, no women's match has been honored with a night session slot during the tournament. A situation that displeases Ons Jabeur.
The Tunisian, who was eliminated in the first round by Magdalena Frech, once again pointed out the organizers' choices to favor only men's matches.
Present at a press conference on Thursday after the ceremony honoring Richard Gasquet, who played the final match of his career against Jannik Sinner, tournament director Amélie Mauresmo justified why Gaël Monfils (twice), Holger Rune, or Jannik Sinner were preferred over Sabalenka or Swiatek, for example.
"Regarding the scheduling of night matches, I won’t bring anything new to the table compared to previous years, since our system of having a single match in the evening hasn’t changed. As a result, we won’t alter our entire way of thinking.
What I can tell you is that playing time is obviously taken into account when we have only one match, for potential playing duration. We can’t predict how long a match, whether men’s or women’s, will last.
In any case, it’s something we have to consider, especially with 15,000 people in the stadium for the night matches. Of course, since men’s matches are best-of-five sets, at least three sets will be played, so it’s certainly complicated for us to do otherwise," Mauresmo explained.
The former world No. 1 was then asked about the puzzle of scheduling for Saturday night, as the chosen match will take place at the same time as the Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan.
"We still have a lot of work to do on the scheduling. Generally, it’s true that we try to release it early so players have time to prepare.
We’ve started thinking about it, but we’ll take a little more time afterward. A good night’s sleep, and we’ll revisit it calmly the next day once we have all the results.
As for the Champions League final, it doesn’t change much for us. We’re focused on our tournament, we’re happy PSG is in the final, clearly, and we hope things go well for them.
We’re in our own world. We’ll have 15,000 people there tomorrow to watch tennis. We’ll try to offer them the best program possible," she concluded for Tennis Actu TV.
So they are only performing around 30% then their men counterparts in slams and still getting that big fat cheque, whose fault is that now?😑