Amelie Mauresmo: Women’s tennis has much less ‘appeal’ than males’s

Amelie Mauresmo, a former No. 1 participant who’s in her first 12 months because the French Open’s first feminine match director, stated Wednesday that 9 of the ten night time classes at Roland Garros concerned males’s matches as a result of girls’s tennis at present has much less “appeal.”

Speaking on the conventional second-week information convention to recap the clay-court Grand Slam match, Mauresmo stated she tried each day to discover a girls’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 Philippe Chatrier.

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“I admit it was tough,” stated Mauresmo, a 42-year-old from France.

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The present No. 1-ranked lady, Iga Swiatek, stated after her quarterfinal victory in Paris on Wednesday that she discovered Mauresmo’s feedback “a little bit disappointing and surprising.”

“It’s kind of the personal opinion of every person if they like men’s tennis or women’s tennis more or if they like them equally, but I think women’s tennis has a lot of advantages,” stated Swiatek, the 2020 French Open champion, who has gained 33 matches in a row. “And some may say that it’s unpredictable and girls are not consistent. But on the other hand, it may also be something that is really appealing and it may really attract more people.”

This 12 months’s French Open started on May 22 and can finish on Sunday. The final of the ten night time classes was scheduled for Wednesday, and the one girls’s match that bought the prime-time therapy — a part of a cope with a streaming service — was France’s Alizé Cornet’s victory over Jelena Ostapenko within the second spherical.

Asked about that decision-making course of, Mauresmo stated in French that having only one match in every night time session made it “more difficult to have” that be a girls’s match. Night classes on the U.S. Open, for instance, normally embrace one girls’s match and one males’s match.

“In this era that we are in right now, I don’t feel — and as a woman, former women’s player, I don’t feel bad or unfair saying that, right now — you have more … appeal,” Mauresmo stated. “That’s the general (reason) for the men’s matches.”

She added: “My goal was, when I was doing the schedule every day, to try and see, from the first round, when the draw came out … ‘what match in the woman’s draw can I put there?’ honestly.”

Mauresmo first topped the WTA rankings in 2004 and returned to that spot after successful the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006.

Her final main match 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 staff competitors now known 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 among the 15,000 or so spectators unable to make use of public transportation to get dwelling.

“That’s actually a key issue that needs to be settled, and that will be one of our priorities in the future,” Mauresmo stated. “We haven’t planned anything yet, but obviously we need to organize ourselves differently with the Department of Transport of Paris with bus systems, with the underground system. If we continue with these night sessions in this direction, people need to leave the stadium late enough and make sure that they have a way to come back home, as they should.”

Nadal, via the media, and his supervisor, Carlos Costa, instantly with Mauresmo, made clear the proprietor of 21 Grand Slam titles most popular to not play at night time, due to the best way the cooler temperatures have an effect on his pictures. It dropped under 60 levels Fahrenheit (15 Celsius) throughout his quarterfinal.

Asked about that, Mauresmo deflected the query and replied: “Rafa has shown us how big a champion he is, far and beyond all these considerations.”

Mauresmo stated a full evaluation of the complete match might be performed after it ends, together with contemplating modifications to the night time classes and different scheduling issues.