Women’s tennis has less ‘appeal’ than men’s: French Open boss
PARIS –
Amelie Mauresmo, a former No. 1 participant who’s in her first yr because the French Open’s first feminine event director, stated Wednesday that 9 of the ten night time periods at Roland Garros concerned males’s matches as a result of ladies’s tennis at the moment has much less “attraction.”
Talking on the conventional second-week information convention to recap the clay-court Grand Slam event, Mauresmo stated she tried each day to discover a ladies’s pairing that had the star energy or a matchup worthy of being highlighted within the separate session that started at 8:45 p.m. native time in Court docket Philippe Chatrier.
“I admit it was powerful,” stated Mauresmo, a 42-year-old from France.
The present No. 1-ranked girl, Iga Swiatek, stated after her quarterfinal victory in Paris on Wednesday that she discovered Mauresmo’s feedback “just a little bit disappointing and stunning.”
“It is type of the non-public opinion of each particular person in the event that they like males’s tennis or ladies’s tennis extra or in the event that they like them equally, however I feel ladies’s tennis has plenty of benefits,” stated Swiatek, the 2020 French Open champion, who has received 33 matches in a row. “And a few could say that it is unpredictable and ladies aren’t constant. However then again, it might even be one thing that’s actually interesting and it might actually entice extra individuals.”
The lady Swiatek beat on Wednesday, Eleventh-seeded Jessica Pegula, thought of Mauresmo’s stance “not one thing you wish to hear,” and famous that one of the simplest ways to develop curiosity in any sport is “to have possibilities” to indicate how good the product is.
“In fact, it is all the time just a little disappointing to listen to that is her reasoning, being a feminine … Slam champion,” stated Pegula, a New Yorker whose dad and mom personal the NFL’s Buffalo Payments and NHL’s Buffalo Sabres. “However hopefully we are able to change that.”
She additionally provided a defence of her sport, which is at the moment lacking the star energy of 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, who has not competed since getting injured at Wimbledon almost a yr in the past.
“To me, I really feel like so many individuals love watching ladies’s tennis as a result of we do not have big serves. We’re not acing. There’s not plenty of tremendous, tremendous fast factors,” Pegula stated. “There’s extra rallies. There’s extra drama.”
This yr’s French Open started on Might 22 and can finish on Sunday. The final of the ten night time periods was Wednesday’s males’s quarterfinal between Casper Ruud and Holger Rune, and the one ladies’s match that received the prime-time therapy — a part of a cope with a streaming service — was France’s Alize Cornet’s victory over Jelena Ostapenko within the second spherical.
Requested about that decision-making course of, Mauresmo stated in French that having only one match in every night time session made it “harder to have” that be a ladies’s match. Evening periods on the U.S. Open, for instance, normally embody one ladies’s match and one males’s match.
“On this period that we’re in proper now, I do not really feel — and as a girl, former ladies’s participant, I do not really feel unhealthy or unfair saying that, proper now — you’ve gotten extra … attraction,” Mauresmo stated. “That is the final (purpose) for the boys’s matches.”
She added: “My purpose was, after I was doing the schedule day by day, to attempt to see, from the primary spherical, when the draw got here out … ‘what match within the girl’s draw can I put there?’ actually.”
Mauresmo first topped the WTA rankings in 2004 and returned to that spot after profitable the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006.
Her final main event was the 2009 U.S. Open. After retiring as a participant, Mauresmo moved into teaching and labored with Andy Murray, Lucas Pouille and Marion Bartoli, amongst others, and was France’s captain for the group competitors now referred to as the Billie Jean King Cup.
Mauresmo’s session with reporters was held the morning after 13-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal’s 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 (4) quarterfinal victory over defending champion Novak Djokovic in Tuesday’s night time session. The match lasted 4 hours, 12 minutes and completed after 1 a.m., leaving a number of the 15,000 or so spectators unable to make use of public transportation to get house.
“That is really a key difficulty that must be settled, and that can be considered one of our priorities sooner or later,” Mauresmo stated. “We’ve not deliberate something but, however clearly we have to set up ourselves in another way with the Division of Transport of Paris with bus methods, with the underground system. If we proceed with these night time periods on this path, individuals want to go away the stadium late sufficient and make it possible for they’ve a method to come again house, as they need to.”
Nadal, by the media, and his supervisor, Carlos Costa, immediately with Mauresmo, made clear the proprietor of 21 Grand Slam titles most well-liked to not play at night time, due to the way in which the cooler temperatures have an effect on his pictures. It dropped under 60 levels Fahrenheit (15 Celsius) throughout his quarterfinal.
Requested about that, Mauresmo deflected the query and replied: “Rafa has proven us how large a champion he’s, far and past all these concerns.”
Mauresmo stated a full overview of your complete event can be carried out after it ends, together with contemplating modifications to the night time periods and different scheduling issues.
