Roland Garros Organizers Under Fire After Another Scheduling Controversy
ATP & WTA
The scheduling of events seems to be a hot topic in the world of tennis recently, and the Roland Garros didn't avoid a controversy.
At the Grand Slam event in the French capital, there's one prestigious spot on the schedule and that's the night match on the Court Philippe-Chatrier. Most of the time, it's a match with the best atmosphere and the match that is watched the most.
On the first day of the competition, Ugo Humbert defeated Adrian Mannarino 6-3, 6-3, 6-1 in an all-French duel. On Monday, Jannik Sinner overcame Alexandre Muller 6-1, 6-4, 6-1, before Gael Monfils made the fans erupt after his sensational win over Sebastian Baez 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 1-6, 7-5.
On Wednesday, Novak Djokovic bested Marton Fucsovics 7-6(2), 6-0, 6-3, and on Thursday, Gael Monfils was supposed to play on the court in the night session again. But the Frenchman was forced to withdraw from the tournament and the match was replaced by a meeting between Alexander Zverev and Alex Molcan, which resulted in a quick win for the German.
And what did the schedule for Friday bring? A match between the first-seeded Carlos Alcaraz and Denis Shapovalov. All attractive matches, right? So what's the problem? Well, all matches were ATP matches with no place for women to showcase their qualities in the night.
Many claim that it's because of the fact that men's matches usually take longer because of the best-of-five format, making it more attractive for the fans. However, for example, Zverev's win took less than two hours, and many WTA matches would surpass that.
As the voices get louder, the tournament organizers will get a chance to change the approach in the coming days and give one of the spots also to a WTA match. It will be interesting to see how they approach the situation and if some change will come as even Sloane Stephens said that 'the organizers do as they please'.
