The men’s “night sessions” followed one another in the first week of this 122nd edition of Roland-Garros. But when would a women’s game get the night session credit? It was done this Sunday, June 4. Aryna Sabalenka and Sloane Stephens faced off on the Philippe-Chatrier court at 8 p.m. The decision of the organizers was not to everyone’s liking: as soon as the news was announced the evening before, many ticket holders for the match rushed to the official resale platform.
No less than two hundred places, in particular in category 1 (145 euros) and category 2 (110 euros), were still available on Sunday a few hours before the meeting. Since the introduction of night sessions, four matches in the women’s draw have been scheduled (Serena Williams-Begu and Swiatek-Kostyuk in 2021, Cornet-Ostapenko last year and, therefore, Sabalenka-Stephens this year).
However, the “night session” is not unanimous among the players. Poland’s Iga Swiatek, world number one, who applied for an evening match on Saturday, repeated at a press conference two days earlier her attachment to a daytime session: “There are players who like the energy of the evening. , who like to play in the evening because of the conditions it offers. Me, I prefer to have a real daytime rhythm and I lost it in Madrid. I asked every day personally to play daytime. I have already played in the night session during the clay court season and I did not like it too much. I don’t even watch games at night, actually. I just try to recover and not think about tennis. It would be nice, of course, to have night games with women, but I’m not helping the cause much. »
Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, world number seven, qualified for the quarter-finals of the tournament, showed her enthusiasm: “It was time to put a women’s match in “night session”. It’s a bit weird that there aren’t both men’s and women’s matches. All the other Grand Slams do. I played super late in Australia and at the US Open. It’s not necessarily a good thing, but that’s what we were doing. Maybe we should start a “night session” a little earlier for the two matches to take place. I understand that with guys, who can play five sets, it can be difficult, but we’ve done it in other Grand Slams. I don’t know why only men’s matches were scheduled for the first eight days. »
Tournament director Amélie Mauresmo defends the choice to schedule a single women’s night session match: “The situation is very different from that of the US Open and the Australian Open. We talked a lot about the possibility of having two matches, there was a debate about the men’s matches versus the women’s matches in the evening. There are several things I wanted to avoid. I don’t think the audience is in their place at 7 p.m. In Paris, people leave work quite late, so getting them seated at 7:30 p.m. in the stadium is a real challenge. »
