Roland Garros tournament director Amelie Mauresmo defends controversial scheduling: "There is no perfect solution here"

Roland Garros (French Open) tournament director Amelie Mauresmo has defended the controversial scheduling which saw all the premier time slots go to ATP matches.

This year's Roland Garros has been under fire for the same reason it was under fire last year. Once again it's the night shift scheduling with the premier time slot mostly going to ATP matches. A few players were asked about with most of them highlighting that exposure for WTA matches matters a lot yet we haven't seen a single one being put in that slot.

Last year director Mauresmo defended it by explaining that ATP matches simply garner more interest and she offered a very similar explanation to last year:

" Some people asked me before this edition, ‘So, are you going to do five men’s matches and five women’s matches (during the night sessions)?’ I don’t know. For me the priority in equality is definitely to have two women and two men on each court every day."

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No perfect solution

Mauresmo further explained that there is no perfect solution with the thinking behind the selection mostly focused on picking the best match regardless of whether it's a men's or women's one:

We are a unique example of only one match scheduled in the evening, it makes it quite difficult to know in advance. It's a tough one. There is no perfect solution here. We have 15,000 people buying tickets for that match for 10 days so I’m really thinking about what would be the best match of the day. I cannot think at the moment differently on that. But other than that, I believe we are quite equal in pretty much everything that we do. "

So far we haven't seen one in that timeslot but perhaps with better matchups coming up in the later rounds we get to see one.

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