Breaking Lopsided scheduling at Roland Garros remains depressingly familiar, writes MATTHEW LAMBWELL, the truth is the French Open’s night session is a flawed concept to begin with EnglishHeadline

Deja vu, plus ca change – decide your native phrase however whichever approach you slice it, the French Open‘s lopsided scheduling stays depressingly acquainted.

After seven days of the match, each prime-time night time session match has been a males’s singles. The primary match on Philippe Chatrier – when it is all the time half-empty as a result of the locals are having lunch – has been a girls’s singles day-after-day.

Amelie Mauresmo did her ordinary mid-tournament press convention and was taken to activity as soon as once more. ‘The identical questions 12 months after one other,’ stated the 45-year-old. ‘Similar solutions,’ replied her interrogator. Fairly.

‘We now have to take it into consideration the 15,000 spectators coming in for the night time session,’ stated Mauresmo.

‘Since males’s tennis is performed on the best-of-five units, three units will probably be performed at a minimal. It is difficult for us to do in any other case.’

To sum up her place: when there is just one match within the night time session, we’ll all the time go for a males’s match as a result of that ensures the punters a minimal of three units, quite than two.

French Open match director Amelie Mauresmo has defended this 12 months’s scheduling

Each prime-time night time session match up to now this 12 months has been a males’s singles contest

Gael Monfils pictured waving to followers after dropping to Jack Draper throughout Thursday’s late present

Why cannot you could have two matches, a males’s and a girls’s? As a result of then the night time session would end too late.

Why cannot you begin it earlier? As a result of folks would not be capable of get there in time after leaving work, so the stands could be empty for the primary match.

It’s not simple to argue with any of her reasoning, however that doesn’t make the top end result any extra palatable.

The reality is, the Roland Garros night time session is a flawed idea to start with. The contract with Amazon Prime Video – shaving off that one match per day from the primary home TV deal – ought to by no means have been signed.

It’s a money seize – each for TV rights and the power to fleece followers by promoting two separate tickets for someday of motion. Wimbledon is the one Grand Slam remaining with out a night time session – and we will thank Wandsworth council’s 11pm curfew for that. However in Melbourne and New York they all the time have two night matches – one males’s, one girls’s.

If you cannot try this, they do not have an evening session – this occasion managed simply advantageous for 120 years with out one. It is too bloody chilly in Paris in Could for watching tennis at midnight, anyway – bear in mind all of the followers tucked up in blankets for Nadal v Djokovic in 2022?

Mauresmo’s lack of empathy and consciousness on this challenge is staggering. How can a former WTA star fail to grasp – or acknowledge – the significance of visibility and platforming for the ladies’s sport?

Girls’s tennis in France goes to the canines – they’ve nobody on the planet’s prime 70. How are Mauresmo and Co going to alter that when little ladies come residence from college, watch their nationwide match and are greeted by a female-free zone?