US Open tournament director Stacey Allaster has confirmed that as past years, night sessions will be part of the New York major in 2023. The announcement has drawn responses from the likes of Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka in ATP and WTA.
Players are particular debating about the scheduling of the final Slam of the year after rained off matches at Toronto Masters where a contest between Daria Kasatkina and last year Wimbledon’s champion Elena Rybakina ended at around 3am.
Rybakina lambasted the WTA as weak and unprofessional following her brutal exit from the tourney, revealing that she felt destroyed. The situation also forced Liudmila Samsonova to play twice in a day for a runner-up spot as the fatigued Russian could only won one game against Jessica Pegula in the championship match.
During last year at Flushing Meadows a number of matches went into the early hours including the high-octane five-set quarterfinal clash between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner that didn’t end until 2:50am.
The two night slot matches in the Arthur Ashe Stadium are tagged as the matches of the day and they don’t start before 7pm. A two time Slam Champion, Victoria Azarenka who also happens to be a member of WTA Player Council Member raised her voice on the scheduling.
“I try to be reasonable, I try to compromise, I try to create ideas and we are moving at the slowest pace to get things done. This is the only sport in the world where you don’t know when you will play. I look at it as a player, and it’s ridiculous. I look at it as a fan, and I don’t know which matches I’m going to go watch because I have no clue unless you’re very fanatical.
“We need to appeal to a bigger crowd to watch our sport. The night matches have to start earlier in the 6PM and 8:30PM slots,” said Azarenka.
From men’s side Novak Djokovic tries to maintain a more balanced stance on the issue, “Throughout my career, I have also experienced very late match endings. It doesn’t usually happen regularly, but from time to time. And now many tournaments are introducing night sessions that they didn’t have before.
“Tournaments seek to make more profit by selling tickets for the day and night sessions and I think before it was played in full session. Now, when the day session ends, they empty the stadium so that the people who will be in the night session can enter. It seems good for the players, maybe it’s not ideal, but you also have to find the balance to satisfy the fans. Tournaments are just looking for more profit and income,” said the 23-time GS champion.
The Serb concluded, “The night sessions are more entertaining, the people cheer more and the US Open night sessions are the most famous in tennis. But I understand that if you have finals so late on a consistent basis it’s not good because you have to wait all day to play. If you get up early, you have to kill time before playing. It’s a challenge for the players but I think one of the reasons we finished so late is because of the break between the day session and the night session for the reasons I said.”
The ex-CEO at WTA, Stacey Allaster, is now the tournament director at US Open gave her perspective on the issue, ““Without question, late-night matches were heavily discussed and reviewed after the 2022 US Open.
“I think one of the challenges that we just have as a reality of tennis, we are not defined by a start and an end time. So that unpredictability of a match, sometimes we can have a short match, or we can have that long five-hour match. So at the moment, we’re staying the course with two night matches. We’ll continue to evaluate it.”
The New York major starts on Monday, Aug 28 and once again the night sessions will make some of the most awaited highlights at the final Grand Slam of the season.