France A scheduling issue has forced world number four Jannik Sinner to withdraw from his third-round match against Alex De Minaur at the Paris Masters.
The latest match of the second round between Sinner and Mackenzie McDonald ends at 2:17 a.m. on November 2, Paris time. According to the organizers' schedule, in the third round, Sinner will have to play the fourth match in the session on November 2, instead of being scheduled to play in the evening session. The match between Sinner and De Minaur is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m., meaning the Italian will have just over 14 hours of rest between the two rounds.
"I had to make the right decision for my health and my body," Sinner said. "I left the press conference after the second round match at 3am and didn't sleep for a few hours. That left me with less than 12 hours to recover and prepare for the next match."
Sinner greets the crowd after his win over Mackenzie McDonald on November 2. Photo: AP
After each match, players have to attend a press conference, do recovery exercises, shower, and then go back to the hotel. Sinner is in a difficult position due to the unreasonable scheduling of the organizers. While Sinner was assigned to play the evening session in the second round and the day session in the third round, Novak Djokovic was assigned to play the evening session in the third round despite having played the day session in the second round. This leads to a large difference in rest time between the two championship candidates.
Casper Ruud, the eighth seed of the tournament and eliminated in the second round, reacted strongly on social network X: "Well done ATP! Giving one of the best players in the world 14.5 hours to recover and be ready for the next match. What a joke."
The Paris Masters is packed into a week, with six matches each day in the outer rounds on Centre Court. This makes Sinner’s late finish not the only case. In the first round on October 30, Dominic Thiem defeated Stan Wawrinka at 2:23 am.
Most ATP tournaments have seen this, with the evening session often selling twice as many tickets as the day session. In Beijing last month, Alexander Zverev defeated Alejandro Davidovich Fokina at 2:41 a.m. In the first round of the 2023 US Open, Djokovic started his match against Alexandre Muller at 11:05 p.m. but finished early, winning 3-0. Carlos Alcaraz also finished his match at 1 a.m., after beating Jordan Thompson in Cincinnati.
The above list includes many matches at the Madrid Open, Rome Masters, Australian Open or Roland Garros... Among the major events, only Wimbledon has a rule that matches cannot be played after 11pm, local time. The harsh schedule and sometimes the delay in announcing the schedule, the change in balls, the way prize money is divided, etc. are issues that make tennis players often criticize the ATP and gradually create revolutions.
Vy Anh
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