Coco Gauff welcomed the US Open's initiative to prevent late finishes, which the American described as a huge disadvantage to anybody who experiences them.
One of the burning topics during last year's tennis season was the late finishes at Grand Slam tournaments. None of the players were happy about having to play so late, and they talked a lot about the need for the Tours to stop that practice.
The men, in particular, have it rough because by the nature of having to play the best-of-five matches, which last longer, there is a chance that those matches will extend far to the night.
Plenty of them extend way beyond midnight, which created many problems for players. Gauff never had to experience such a late finish, which she's thankful for, but she knows how badly it can impact a player.
"Yeah, so I've never actually had a super late finish just because I've just been lucky that either the match will go super fast or anything like that."
"But obviously I do think that finishing late can really ruin your tournament, especially, like, on the guys' side when they, you know, if they go on at, like, 11:00 or 12:00, you know, max maybe the longest a women's match will go two hours or three hours, but men's can go, like, five."
The US Open hasn't been much of a culprit in that sense, at least not compared to some other majors, such as the Roland Garros, but the issues with late finishes happened at Flushing Meadows as well.
Quite a few matches in the past few years extended beyond midnight, and to avoid that, the event made a new rule. If a match gets pushed back so much that it would start after 11 p.m. local time, it will be moved to another court so it can start before that time.
Obviously, that will make those matches finish sooner as well, so that's a really good change for players. Gauff certainly welcomed it because the alternative doesn't benefit anyone.
"I think for me I think I heard US Open this year if you're going to start after 11:00 they're going to move your court. I think that's a good initiative to start. You may win that match that day but your sleep schedule and everything is completely messed up for the rest of the tournament. So it does put that person at a disadvantage."
"So I think right now with that new policy, I think that's the best way to address it. I mean, we won't know until we test a lot of things, but I think this is a good start."
Matches at the US Open rarely extend to that time anyway, but if they do, this will help them finish sooner. There have been some really late finishes over the years, like a match between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner in 2022. It ended at 2.50 a.m. local time, only an hour and 11 minutes later than a match between Sinner and Alexander Zverev the following year, which ended at 1:39 a.m.
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