“It’s not ideal to play this late, we’ll see how I feel in the next few hours. » It was 2:37 a.m. when Jannik Sinner put an end to his first match of this Bercy 2023. Victorious, the Italian was not really delighted to have to continue so quickly. The programming did not help the 4th player in the world, by not giving him a small place in the night session this Thursday. Scheduled in the fourth rotation on the Central, he could return to the court with barely fifteen hours of action between his two matches.
A complicated situation that his coach Darren Cahill deplored on his Instagram account. “Happy for Jannik’s victory but no consideration for the health of the players with the Paris schedule,” wrote the Australian coach. Visibly uplifted, Casper Ruud, who came out in the second round, was even more incisive on this program: “Well done ATP, great way to help one of the best players in the world to recover and be as ready as possible while he finished his previous match at 2:37 this morning. 14.5 hours to recover… What a joke. »
With six matches to be played from eleven o’clock (including two scheduled as night sessions), the Central de Bercy offers tennis orgies during the first four days. But this abundance often causes overtime and can, in the long term, penalize players who have to continue.
Media obligations, care, meals
On Wednesday evening, Sinner entered the court after midnight. The evening session, which should in theory begin at 7:30 p.m., had not yet even started two hours after the forecast time (the Zverev-Humbert duel lasted 3 hours 29 minutes). The tournament offered double ticketing for these days, thousands of spectators waited outside while the players were champing at the bit while watching the clock tick. The program had already fallen and the winner of this Sinner-McDonald knew that he would have to move on very quickly.
Between media obligations, treatments, meals, the Italian probably didn’t sleep much. Last year, Corentin Moutet experienced the same kind of acrobatics. He started after midnight and finished his meeting at more than three in the morning before continuing the next day in a day session against Stefanos Tsitsipas. “I fell asleep at 5:30 a.m., well I wasn’t even sleeping, I was just thinking about the match, I had coffee to keep me awake so I couldn’t sleep, it was more like micronap after micronap” , he said after his elimination, quite annoyed.
A year later, the organizers kept the same configuration, undoubtedly not helped by the quality of the two other courts at their disposal. And the programming is once again debated, especially since the very late endings are not so exceptional. On Monday, Dominic Thiem defeated Stan Wawrinka at 2 p.m. He was lucky to have a day off. This will not be the case for Sinner who will have very little time to recover before facing Alex de Minaur.
2023-11-02 12:35:18
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