Tennis fans were forced to stand outside the stadium at the 2023
Paris Masters for over two hours as they waited for the elongated day session to end.
The organizers of the last ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the season put together a jam-packed schedule on Wednesday, November 1, with four day session matches and two in the night session. However, this only agitated fans who had tickets for the later clashes.
This was because several day session matches went on for longer than anticipated. Grigor Dimitrov's win over third seed Daniil Medvedev took almost three hours to complete, after which Alexander Zverev's clash with home player Ugo Humbert went to three and a half hours.
Fans annoyed by ATP's scheduling
As a result, the night session began after 10 pm when it ought to have started at 7:30 pm local time. This meant that fans at the AccorHotels Arena were left outside for over two hours as they waited for the day session to conclude.
This led The Times UK tennis correspondent Stuart Fraser, who was among those waiting, to call out the ATP on social media.
"8:40 pm in Paris and the last of four matches in the day session has gone to a deciding set. Still, a two-match night session to come. Any chance of someone at the ATP lifting their head out of the sand?," he wrote, before later providing another update:
"Outside the arena, almost two and a half hours after the night session was due to begin…"
After the night session eventually started, Holger Rune defeated Dominic Thiem before
Jannik Sinner won his match against Mackenzie McDonald at 2:37 am.
This created more problems the next day after the Italian player was scheduled to face Alex de Minaur at 5 pm, giving him only 14 hours to recover from his early-morning clash. As a result, the World No. 4 withdrew from the tournament, which only increased criticism of the scheduling from fans and players alike.
