Tennis fans waiting for the turnstiles to open at the Paris Masters during Wednesday's night session were forced to gather outside the premises for more than two and a half hours.
The Paris Masters usually has two sessions on its main court. Wednesday's schedule featured six matches, of which four were to be played during the day session, and two matches slated for the night session, which ought to have started at 7:30 pm local time.
But because of an elongated day of play in the afternoon's matches, one which extended close to three hours (that saw Grigor Dimitrov defeat Daniil Medvedev) and the other lasting the full three and half hours (Alexander Zverev beating Ugo Humbert), the night session did not begin at the scheduled time.
The clock ticked past 10 pm when the first match of the night session got underway, pitting defending champion Holger Rune up against 2020 US Open winner Dominic Thiem. There was bedlam and annoyance from fans with The Times UK tennis correspondent Stuart Fraser putting the ATP on the spot.
In his tweet, Fraser said, "8:40 pm in Paris and the last of four matches in the day session has gone to a deciding set. Still, a two-match night session to come. Any chance of someone at the ATP lifting their head out of the sand?"
The scheduling impacted the night session which finished past 2 a.m. and Jannik Sinner was the one who was heavily impacted by it, as his match was last on centre court and didn't start until midnight. The Italian was forced to pull out from his round of 16 match after a 2:37 am finish in beating Mackenzie McDonald.
The World No. 4 was supposed to take to the court to face Alex de Minaur at 5 p.m. on Thursday, about 14 hours from his last match. His coach Darren Cahill was clearly unhappy with the scheduling and quite a handful of players have since contributed their views to the news.
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