Novak Djokovic has given his thoughts on the controversy over the scheduling of the matches at the 2024 Australian Open after yet another late finish at the first slam of the season.
The 24-time Grand Slam champion believes scheduling less matches on the center court and organizing a single session could be the right steps but confessed that these changes would “most likely not going to happen.”
Australian Open chiefs and particularly Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley have been criticized for the late scheduling of the matches during the night sessions in Melbourne. World No. 3 Russian Daniil Medvedev couldn’t finish his R2 match against Emil Ruusuvuori before 3:40am local time, marking one of the latest finished in the history of the “Late Slam” aka Happy Slam.
After Coco Gauff and Djokovic both clinched wins in their quarterfinal matches that have gone the distance on Tuesday, the scheduled on the Rod Laver Arena was once again tweaked which furthered the delays. Quarterfinalists on women’s side, Barbora Krejcikova were asked whether they wanted to move their match to Margaret Court Arena but they declined.
World No. 4, Jannik Sinner’s final eight triumph against Russian Andrey Rublev in the last match of the day both started and finished late and it could have been even late had Sabalenka and Sinner not recorded straight set victories.
Before the start of the tournament, Tiley had claimed that making the Australian Open a 15-day event by starting on Sunday and introducing the double day sessions would be the right solution for the issue. However, the plans were not materialized with the night sessions still hanging around to start at the 8:00 pm at the earliest.
After closing his match against Taylor Fritz, Djokovic gave a detailed response on the scheduling issues when asked if the Sinner-Rublev match finishing late would give him an edge in the semis.
“What kind of advantage will I have? We have two days. It’s not much of an advantage that I see there. We are playing semifinals on Friday, so plenty of time for whoever wins that match tonight to recover. Scheduling has become a hot topic, so to say,” said the 10-time Australian Open champion.
“We talked about it, I think few matches ago I talked about it on the press conference, and I couldn’t give a really clear answer to that, because, I mean, it’s really up to Grand Slams and our respective tours to think about the ways to accommodate both male and female players in a proper way so we have no late finishes.
“I think ATP came up with this rule change, but that’s on ATP Tour. Grand Slams are not part of the ATP Tour. They have their separate rules and regulations that obviously are independent from our tours.
“We know that there are two sessions, right? So if you are scheduling two matches starting at 12:00 with men playing best-of-five, if it goes three, four hours, takes for them I think, whatever, 45 minutes to clean the stadium, bringing new fans for the night session, so it takes a lot of time, you know.
“Coco Gauff played a long match today. I played a very long match today. Then you have the night session starting two hours after they were scheduled, after the time they were scheduled. So not ideal, obviously not great also for Sinner and Rublev. I’m sure that they are not happy with a potential start of whatever.
“Yeah, we’ve seen in the past some late finishes. And I know for the crowds and for the tournament in a way it’s kind of exciting to see a 4:00am finish, a 3:00am finish. I was part of some of those, you know. But it’s definitely not fun for us, you know.
“The good thing about the quarter-finalist on the men’s section is we have two days. So I think that’s plenty of time to get a good sleep and recover. But yeah, I get your point. Look, there are different ways to address this.
“Maybe scheduling less matches on the centre court, doing it in one session, which is most likely not going to happen, because every session carries a lot of economical value for them. So of course they are going to communicate it and try it that way and try to get as many people for different sessions.
“And TV broadcasting, there’s a lot of elements that are in play. TV broadcasting pays a lot of money to the tournament and sponsors the tournament. So obviously, you know, in the end of the day, they are the ones drawing the line and saying, we want to see this player at that session or et cetera, et cetera.
“Even though of course Craig Tiley here, who is a great person, and I respect him a lot, and he’s always trying to do his best for the players. He’s a tournament director and he’s obviously trying always to communicate with players and take their opinions and consideration.
“But, you know, TV broadcasting channels have the biggest power. We know that. Which is not unusual because they are the ones that are giving us the stage, as well, the platform to reach out to millions of people around the world, which is great for us. Yeah, it’s hard to say what the best scenario is in this case.”