The French Open will stage a women’s match in its night session for the first time in three years when a pair of four-time Grand Slam champions, Aryna Sabalenka and Naomi Osaka, meet on Monday.<\/p>\n
Tournament director Amelie Mauresmo has been heavily criticised for reserving the prime-time one-match slot almost exclusively for men’s singles contests.<\/p>\n
Since the session was introduced in 2021, only four of the first 60 matches have been women’s singles and none since 2023.<\/p>\n
But, with the top half of the men’s draw featuring few household names, following the second-round exits of world No 1 Jannik Sinner and record 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic – as well as reigning champion Carlos Alcaraz’s prior withdrawal to injury – the blockbuster clash between Sabalenka and Osaka will end the women’s absence.<\/p>\n
The fourth-round encounter between current world No 1 Sabalenka and former No 1 Osaka will end a streak of 33-straight men’s matches in the evening session at Roland-Garros.<\/p>\n
Mauresmo has previously defended the reliance on men’s matches by citing value for money for ticket-holders and the potential for women’s contests, which are played over best-of-three sets instead of best-of-five, to be very quick.<\/p>\n
Jessica Pegula and Ons Jabeur were among those to criticise the French Open schedulers last year when they again failed to showcase women’s tennis during a night session.<\/p>\n
“We are an event that is supposed to be equal. Slams, it’s supposed to be equal. Why not give us some more chances to be?” Pegula said at the time.<\/p>\n
Jabeur added: “It’s unfortunate for women’s sports in general. Not for tennis, but in general.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bit ironic. They don’t show women’s sport, they don’t show women’s tennis, and then they ask the question, ‘yeah, but mostly they [viewers] watch men’. Of course they watch men more because you show men more. Everything goes together.”<\/p>\n
New WTA chief executive Valerie Camillo met Mauresmo at Roland-Garros this week, where she called for a greater representation of women’s matches.<\/p>\n
Speaking about the possibility of playing in the night session after her third-round win, Osaka said: “I’m so used to not playing night matches here and playing night matches in the US Open or something like that that I don’t even associate this tournament with night matches.”<\/p>\n
Watch the ATP and WTA Tours, live on Sky Sports or stream with NOW<\/a> and the Sky Sports app<\/a>, giving Sky Sports customers access to over 50 per cent more live sport this year at no extra cost. Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The French Open will stage a women’s match in its night session for the first time in three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-613940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}