The quarter-final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, the broadcast of which has been the subject of much discussion between France Télévisions and Amazon, ended at 1:20 a.m. on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.
Both players felt their meeting had been scheduled "too late" for a best-of-three match on clay, and spectators struggled to get home in the absence of transport.
If they are the theater of magnificent and different atmospheres of the day, the night sessions remain a concept to be improved at Roland-Garros, recognizes the director Amélie Mauresmo.
At Roland Garros,
They are supposed to bring a new breath of life to the tournament, a touch of modernity, with a DJ to heat up the atmosphere and dynamic young executives in the stands to strike the matches.
From this point of view, the night sessions, which ran at full speed this year at Roland-Garros after the 2021 warm-up lap, are a success.
Of course, it all depends on what happens on the court.
The concept really only takes on its full meaning if the show is up to it, like during the hair-raising quarter-final between Nadal and Djokovic on Tuesday.
“The night is completely different”
Those who witnessed the Spaniard's magic trick will not soon forget it.
Read the testimony of Julian Leon, an Argentinian who came only for him.
“It was an epic, magical night, just as I had imagined in my dreams, tells us the young man from the airport, where he is about to board to go see his national team play against Italy in London .
I had already played a few matches, but at night it's completely different.
I'm a River Plate fan, I'm used to a crazy atmosphere.
But the atmosphere yesterday around the match, and especially around Rafa, was special.
I lived the match as if it was River who was playing.
There was tension.
The longer the match lasted, the happier we were.
»
Well, not everyone has to go through this with the fanaticism of a furious hincha, but neither is there necessarily a need for a meeting between the best player in history on clay and the world number 1 for having a good time.
Tsitsipas' comeback against Musetti in the first round had its small effect, like Alizé Cornet's fine victory against former winner Ostapenko in the second.
The Frenchwoman was also completely overwhelmed after the meeting.
"I didn't expect so many people.
I was pleasantly surprised, and they were hot potatoes, she appreciated.
From the first to the last point, they didn't let me go, they carried me at arm's length.
»
The question of programming
The nocturnes are not necessarily a rolling business at Roland.
This edition raised a number of questions, starting with that of programming.
The debates around the match between Nadal and Djoko were lively, with the question of accessibility for as many people as possible at the key moment of the fortnight at the center.
" It was hard.
There was no good solution in this story, admitted director Amélie Mauresmo on Wednesday morning.
There were a lot of discussions, exchanges, pressures.
We put everything in the balance, we tried to make the best decision.
Others would say the least bad.
»
The president of France Télévisions, she did not take very well to see this poster spinning at Amazon.
“I find it extremely shocking to favor an American actor to the detriment of public service, complained Delphine Ernotte to
Figaro
.
It's a real breach of equality when not all French people have access to high-speed Internet.
“The new boss of Roland then met her to explain herself and” to burst the abscess so as not to let the relationship with France TV deteriorate “.
Question of schedule
Beyond this very specific match, there is more generally the subject of player comfort.
Not always easy (to put it like that…) to convince them to start at 9 p.m., with the humidity soaring and the temperatures doing the opposite, considerably modifying the playing conditions on clay.
“The evening game schedule raises questions from this point of view, Mauresmo further agreed.
I ask myself them too, to be honest.
It will be on the table at the time of the debrief.
»
It's hard to do otherwise when Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic both pointed out that the matches were scheduled too late.
Because Roland is not the US Open or the Australian Open.
These tournaments take place in the summer, with much higher temperatures, and the matches are generally shorter on hard courts than on clay.
This allows, by starting earlier, to schedule two meetings.
And to place women there, one of the noted weaknesses of these nights with French sauce.
The post-match problem for spectators
Of the ten night sessions of this edition, only one was devoted to the women's draw (the Cornet match).
A choice assumed by the former world number 1.
“It's not a regret, says the one who complained three years ago about the lack of visibility given to the ladies.
It is more complicated by having only one match to schedule a women's match.
At the moment, men's tennis offers more appeal.
“Remarks” disappointing and even surprising “, reacted in the afternoon the favorite of the tournament Iga Swiatek.
The subject is delicate.
Because programming a meeting in two winning sets also means taking the risk of an evening over in fifty minutes when people have sometimes been able to pay 10 euros more than to see three matches during the day.
To continue on the "spectator experience", we will also have to think about the post-match.
Like us, the new boss of the tournament saw that many people had trouble getting home leaving Central at 1:30 a.m. after Nadal's victory.
No more subways, no more buses, and taxis or Ubers crowded.
Some apparently did not hesitate to take advantage of the situation.
“We have just returned from Roland-Garros.
The taxis asked 95 euros to make the two kilometers to our apartment, we walked, ”testified a spectator on Twitter at 3:35 a.m.
It stings a little, for a Tuesday.
2:20am.
Over an hour after the match and there are still people all over the place outside the Roland Garros grounds desperately trying to locate a taxi/Uber home.
madness.
— Stuart Fraser (@stu_fraser) June 1, 2022
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“It was a great night, even though there was no public transport at the time the match ended.
It was pretty tough and I finally had to take the night bus home.
It took me 1h50 to get to my hotel, says Weiyi Li, an Englishman from Leeds.
The organization would have to put in place something to bring people back to the city center.
The question was put to Amélie Mauresmo a few hours later.
“It's a key point, and it will be in the future.
We have not planned any particular things, it is clear that we have to organize ourselves differently, she agreed.
We do not have the means today to organize something for 15,000 people leaving the stadium.
»
Our Roland-Garros file
Colleagues, particularly Anglo-Saxons, were surprised that this issue had not been considered upstream.
Hard to prove them wrong.
Asked, the transport organizing authority in the Paris region confirmed to us that the FFT had not contacted it before the tournament to raise this question.
“And it is not possible to extend the opening hours of a network such as ours spontaneously”, specifies Ile-de-France Mobilités.
But everything remains open for the next editions.
"We are ready to discuss with the French Tennis Federation to study whether a technical and financial partnership is possible," she adds.
The message got through.
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Tennis
Roland Garros 2022
Rafael Nadal
Novak Djokovic
Amelie Mauresmo