It will be interesting to see how packed Rod laver arena is towards the end. It’s packed at the moment.
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It’s also a weeknight, plenty have work tomorrow (a lot will still stay up but can’t too late), even though yes school holidays with all children off, unis closed and quite a few parents would also be on holidays.
Expect this Friday night’s men’s semi, if a thriller and very late, to be high for that time of night.
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Sinner beat Rublev in straight sets, but the match did not finish until 1.21am.
Yesterday’s Rod Laver Arena schedule began with a men’s legends double match at midday. I think had that match been scrapped, and Coco Gauff’s quarter final started at 11am, the schedule would have finished much earlier.
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The scheduling has been poor at the Australian Open for years - dictated far too much by Nine and previously Seven.
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Agree, why couldn’t Gauff have been at 11:15am aedt, still prime time USA (even better as earlier rather than later there especially for west coast)
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Would the players really want this though? They are there, prepped and ready to play. Plus playing the next day means that whoever gets through would miss their rest day and has less time to prepare for the next match. It puts them at much more of a disadvantage going into the next round.
I know late matches are not ideal but it’s a hard balance. People pay good money for tickets to Rod Laver Arena with an advertised 2 singles matches in the evening (for most rounds up until the finals). You would have people there to see a particular player in the later match as well. It’s also not as easy as just switching to another court at 10pm. They would need staff, security, ball boys, media and everything else goes into it that isn’t going to be ready at the flick of a switch. It’s not that easy.
Tennis is unpredictable. Games can go for 90 mins or 5 hours. On the flip side, if they only scheduled one match and I paid money for Rod Laver and it was over in 90 odd minutes (like the Alcaraz match the other night) I’d be pretty annoyed too. So would the sponsors.
The one thing that I’d change is some of the day scheduling to reduce the chances of that backlog into the night session like we saw yesterday. When I went last week we only had 2 day matches on RLA - yesterday they had 3. If they are going to squeeze 3 matches in then play for the day should start an hour earlier.
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I’m of the opinion they need to re-structure their day flow, from ticketing to start time etc.
No other slam seems to have this issue, or at least as regularly as the AO.
Also, it’s quite evident they shouldn’t be putting nonsense like legends doubles on RLA on quarter-final day
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Not true. The US Open has an almost identical schedule setup and evening schedule to the Australian Open on the main court. Arthur Ashe Stadium most nights hosts 2 matches from 7pm, so there is just as much chance of these running late as games here. Alcaraz had a match run till almost 3am in 2022.
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Yes I recall that - it just doesn’t seem to happen as much there.
I do wonder if the heat and fatigue plays a factor at the AO - top players more likely to go to five sets etc.
Regardless, I’m not sure the fact it happens at the US is a good enough reason for it to not consider changes at the AO.
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AO organisers had heeded the fans’ call and moved forward the start time of today’s quarter-final between Linda Noskova and Dayana Yastremska to midday Melbourne time.
Also, a men’s doubles quarter-final involving Australia’s Matt Ebden was suspended early in the first set, after bubbles were found on playing surface at court 3. The match was then moved to Margaret Court Arena.
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Nick Kyrgios’s column:
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I think it would depend on the players in question, and if they feel that playing on until 3-4am is worse than having to resume the next day. If both players wanted to play on that option should also be available if a curfew was introduced.
Suspending and resuming games is already a common occurrence especially at Wimbledon and in my view it comes down to what is the ‘lesser evil’.
Of course scheduling could be improved earlier in the day too to ensure that sessions start at a reasonable time.
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Yet another men’s match that’s going to 5 sets ,Medvedev vs Hurkacz
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It was not a very good day for Australians today in the Mixed Doubles with Fourlis/Harris & Polmans/Gadecki eliminated in the Semi Finals.
However, Australia’s Storm Hunter and Czech’s Katerina Siniakova made it to the Women’s Doubles SEmi Final after beating Siegmund/Krejcikova.
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“Do better”. AO farce is getting ridiculous:
However, if the women’s QF tonight was after the men’s (let’s say it went 5 sets) it’d be on even later and basically nobody would be watching. Aren’t week 2 finals normally like this for that reason?
Whereas, like seen last night with massive “late” ratings, viewers will still flock later for the men (even if lower than if 7pm), while women have been boosted with a higher than otherwise audience.
Also USA and UK to consider, better time now than a few hours or so ago (while 7pm tonight was a late afternoon slot and still optimal for the lucrative Chinese audiences).
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Ebden and Rohan Bopanna (43 years old and still going!!) through to the men’s doubles final, plsying Czech/Chinese pair Tomas Machac and Zhizhen Zhang, one of the dark horses.
Taiwanese player Su-wei Hsieh is going for her seventh doubles grand slam title, in the mixed doubles final on
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Alcarez getting wiped off the court tonight, what a disappointing shock
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All you are then doing is cluttering or disrupting the next days schedule. They are not going to shove top seeded players on a show court. This is just how it is in Grand Slams. Primetime viewing is a massive part of the tournament.
Wimbledon is completely different because they only play during the day and they are much more attuned to disruptions like rain. As mentioned the Us Open schedule their night sessions exactly how we do and the French Open now also have night matches that start 8.30pm. Usually it’s a men’s singles match, but if one goes over 5 hours they could easily run till 2am as well. That’s tennis.
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Novak watching this tonight already preparing his winner’s speech for Sunday…
Remember back to when he won Wimbledon - people were acting like he was going to be pretty much unbeatable and that Djokovic’s day was over. That was certainly jumping the gun.
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