Scheduling headaches
On Roland Garros sidelining women's tennis - again
The word ‘scheduling’ does not exactly scream sexy. It’s a boring administrative element to most people’s daily lives, and it remains a dull topic in sport too. It is not an easy headline sell to editors, nor is it going to grab the attention of viewers. I am sorry to bring this tiresome topic to my Substack.
But, like clockwork, here I am again talking about scheduling in tennis, as the 10th and final night session at Roland Garros rolls around.
It is with a weariness that I dedicate my post to this. I would much rather talk about anything else. Maybe that incredible Naomi Osaka vs Iga Swiatek second round match? Or Ons Jabeur’s welcome return to form? Even the budding rivalry between soon-to-be-crowned world No 1 Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, ahead of their semifinal on Friday?
However, for the third year in a row, women have been largely shut out of the primetime slot in Paris. It is infuriating, so here I am.
Ten out of 10 night sessions on Court Philippe-Chatrier - the scheduling space reserved for the match of the day - have featured men’s matches this year. That means zero women’s matches were deemed important enough to usurp the men’s prized spot.
During the last three years at Roland Garros just two out of 30 night sessions on the main show court have been reserved for women’s matches. You read that right, two. This year’s 0 from 10 marks a backwards step, the worst example yet and, more than anything, the predictability of the whole thing is getting so exhausting.
I’ve asked myself a few times this week why I care so much. Reigning champion Iga Swiatek is known to have asked not to play at night. “Honestly, sorry to say, but I don’t care… I’m fine with playing during the day,” she said earlier this week.
She is likely not the only one. We know the conditions play slower, the temperature drops drastically during the evening in Paris, and the late finish can impact player recovery. So, if the world No 1 does not feel particularly strongly about it, is it really a hill anyone should be dying on (or obsessing over)?
Unfortunately, I think it is. Swiatek’s personal preference may have come into decision-making in some way, but let’s not pretend the French Open organisers were being courteous and offering her first dibs. I’m sure Novak Djokovic would prefer not to have played the night session this week, in particular his match which began at 10:37pm on Monday and finished past 3am. But he was still scheduled in that slot because he was considered the top draw of the day.
There is a lot wrong with scheduling in tennis. Tournaments overlap all over the place, and matches should not be finishing past midnight - but it has become commonplace across the world.
At the French Open in particular, the other issue is that there is an acceptance that the men are the best show in town. Until the organisers start to include women in the evening session, that perception will not change.
This was not a problem at Roland Garros before 2021, as the tournament did not historically have a night session. I first covered the French Open in person in 2022, but my colleagues have reminisced fondly about a better time: a full day of tennis finishing at dusk and evenings spent soaking up Paris’s famous cafe culture, rather than shivering in the stands, scribbling notes at 2am after a 13-hour shift.
Whether we like the night session or not, it's here to stay. The French Tennis Federation introduced it as part of a lucrative television rights deal with Amazon Prime Video and it allows organisers to sell 15,000 extra tickets each night. That is not something easily reversed, even though the cold nights fail to create the kind of atmosphere you find in warmer Melbourne and New York. (At Wimbledon, they follow Merton Council’s 11pm curfew).
Roland Garros tournament director Amelie Mauresmo, a former Wimbledon and Australian Open champion, has taken the brunt of the criticism when it comes to scheduling. When she first took on the role in 2022, she even had to apologise for saying men's matches had "more attraction" in this era of tennis than women’s.
I interviewed her last year for the Telegraph on exactly this topic. Sat in a meeting room within the Court Philippe-Chatrier building, I wondered if I had misheard her when she said, “I was pretty happy about [2022] and how I handled” the scheduling. (A reminder, in 2022 there was one women’s match scheduled in the night session).
Her view was (and remains) that, because the French Open is “unique” among the grand slams in scheduling only one match in their evening session, they have to prioritise putting “the best match of the day” in that slot to satisfy ticket holders.
By the end of last year’s tournament though, she admitted that they “can do better on the night matches”. Disappointingly the situation has only worsened.
Some put it down to fear that scheduling a women’s tie as the only evening match could leave ticket holders feeling short-changed as they play best-of-three sets, rather than best-of-five like the men (yet another unequal component to grand slam tennis). Only a few days ago, Swiatek dispatched with her opponent Anastasia Potapova in just 40 mins, the score 6-0 6-0 - the quickest French Open match since 1998.
An easy solution would be to host two matches in the evening session, and to begin it much earlier than the current 8:15pm start-time.
But those fears of one-side matches rarely extend to the men’s side, even though there are plenty of complete duds, regardless of the best-of-five format. Sport is not predictable, yet the Roland Garros organisers have convinced themselves that men’s tennis offers more to fans simply because of the quantity of sets on offer. It is just not true.
Four-time major champion Naomi Osaka proved that last week, when she pushed Swiatek to a three-hour thriller scheduled during the afternoon session. While they played one of the best matches of the season - let alone the tournament - thousands of fans waited outside in the pouring rain, blocked from accessing the court until the night session. Their patience was rewarded with a dour straight sets victory for Jannik Sinner over veteran Frenchman Richard Gasquet. Great job schedulers, I didn’t see that one coming!
Then, on Tuesday, US Open champion Coco Gauff and three-time grand slam finalist Ons Jabeur went toe-to-toe in an absorbing three-set quarterfinal - scheduled at 11am. Later, in the evening session, Carlos Alcaraz ploughed past Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets borefest.
Jabeur was understandably disappointed, as the women’s match began before many fans had even taken their seats. “I would have loved a quarterfinal at night, not at 11am. For me, doesn’t make sense,” Jabeur said on Tuesday, after her loss to Gauff. “Playing a quarterfinal at 11am is really such a chore. We deserve to be here. Playing in the afternoon is better. There is going to be more people watching us and the stadiums are crowded. Honestly I wish I could see the contract signed between both Prime and here [Roland Garros] to know what’s the deal there.”
She added: “There was a lot of good women’s matches, obviously not four hours, but who said it’s healthy to play past 1am? And who said the stadium was full at 1am or 2am? I don’t know who is watching the matches at that time…I think for all players, men, women, we deserve better than that. We deserve better scheduling.”
Jabeur is one of very few to offer such criticism about the women’s exclusion. And maybe that is because scheduling is not the most important thing affecting women in tennis. Equal pay is still a distant dream at most tournaments. Broadcasting rights for WTA matches are valued below that of the ATP. There are barely any women coaching on tour. Players want better maternity and childcare protections. The WTA Finals are being hosted in Saudi Arabia for the next three seasons. There is plenty on the agenda that may have far wider impact than what time their matches are scheduled.
But all these things add up and are connected to the way the organisers at Roland Garros - one of the four most prestigious tournaments in the sport - view the women. Omitting them from primetime scheduling is an unsubtle way of suggesting that the women are the warm-up act to the men.
It matters that the women are being pushed into the dead morning sections of the schedule at Roland Garros. It is embarrassing and it perpetuates the idea that crowds do not show up for women’s sport when, in reality, if the women’s tour was afforded all the same leadership, sponsorship opportunities, broadcast deals, court allocations and schedule slots that the men are, maybe - just maybe - we would start to see things even out.
If there is no pushback to scheduling inequality, then you end up with it being accepted as ‘tradition’. For example, take the widely accepted practice of scheduling the men’s singles final on the last Sunday of all grand slam events. One seemingly small decision automatically elevates the importance of the men’s match over the women’s, which is held the day before every single year. That repeat messaging, however subliminal, takes hold in the way fans, players and organisers see the sport.
Women’s tennis is not less interesting, it merely is forced to exist within an environment that consistently stifles its potential. So another piece about the Roland Garros scheduling may not leap off the page (or the screen), but it matters.
Recommendations
Jemele Hill wrote a brilliant piece in The Atlantic about some of the ridiculous, condescending punditry taking over the WNBA, from a number of male analysts who have never reported on women’s basketball before and are failing to do the most basic research. I laughed out loud - read it here.
That’s all for this week!
Molly x
Always has felt strange that despite Amelie Mauresmo claiming she’s all for furthering the women’s game, she constantly pushes it aside.
I understand the ticketing problem (statistically, men’s matches get more in person viewers), it’s technically irrelevant because a night session can include both men’s and women’s players in one ticket.
Great writing as always.