Late-night match finishes in the 2024 French Open have drawn the ire of several top players in the tennis world. Novak Djokovic recently admitted that these things “could have been handled differently” at the French Open. While Coco Gauff called the late-night finishes “not healthy” for the players. And now Carlos Alcaraz gives his reaction to these saying “I don’t like night sessions.” The 21-year-old Spaniard spoke about multiple difficulties that the players have to go through with these late-night finishes during his recent post-match interview.

Tennis fans have now started to call Novak Djokovic the ‘Marathon Man’. The Serbian tennis star battled past Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in a five-set thriller in the third round finishing at 3:07 am (local time) on Sunday morning. Then yet again he fought a tiring 4 hours and 39 minutes battle against Francisco Cerundolo in the R4 to book his spot into the QF of the tournament. But in the process, he also injured his knee.

Carlos Alacaraz, looking like the only ‘true contender’ to win it all on clay right now, was asked to reflect on his thoughts a bit on these frequent late-night finishes. Replying to that question, Alcaraz said, “Well, for me, I don’t like late-night sessions but not for the crowd I think.”

He further went on to add, “For the crowd that session is special. But we end so late, press conference, physio, ice bath, we have to do a lot of things that are really important things to recover for the next matches.” Alcaraz basically tried to tell the fans that the day of a player isn’t finished just after playing the last point. But there are a lot of things they need to take care of after that. Speaking more on Djokovic, he added, “Novak I’m sure he went to sleep at 6:00 am. And the last one finished at three or something like that.”

Three hours between the last point and until Novak Djokovic finally went to sleep! Alcaraz feels it’s really very difficult for players to recover when they go to sleep so late. He feels it’s a lot better if matches get finished early and they get the chance to explore the good restaurants in the town and have some good food. But unfortunately the players can’t do too much on this other than learn to adapt.

Even Iga Swiatek, who recently took just 40 minutes to defeat Anastasia Potapova by 6-0,6-0 in the R4, does not support late match timings.

“It’s not easy” – Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud reiterate negative views on late-night finishes

During the post-match press conference after Potapova’s defeat, Iga Swiatek stated, “It’s not easy to play and then it’s not like we’re going to fall asleep one hour after the match. Usually, it takes us, like, four hours to even chill, and you need to do recovery, media. It’s not like the work ends when the match point.”

She revealed that she was always one of the players who has always been vocal about the idea of starting the matches a little bit earlier. Swiatek feels these late-night finishes may well be troublesome for the fans too, as they have to go to work the next day.

Even the Norwegian tennis star, Casper Ruud recently took to X to vent his thoughts after finishing his third match after 1 am. He stated, “I have to cool down on the bike for 15 minutes, do press/media, ice bath for 10 minutes, shower, eat and then get treatment/massage.”

Share your thoughts on this burning issue at the French Open this year. Do you think the tournament organizers should now consider starting the matches a bit earlier than the regular time?