Finding perfection in imperfections- a way to sum up the new policies that headlined ahead of the 2024 US Open. Last week, tournament director Stacey Allaster stated that if the second evening match on Ashe or the final match on Armstrong runs past 11:15 PM, the referee may decide to move it to a different court. However, despite this, we saw a few matches getting started very late at night, including Aryna Sabalenka’s match against Ekaterina Alexandrova in the R3. While we heard several players speak on this issue in the last few days, now Allaster has yet again been drawn back into this topic!

As a matter of fact, Stacey Allaster is the first woman to ever hold the position of tournament director at any of the four Grand Slam events. It was only natural for her to be in the limelight during the tournament, along with players. And in its aftermath, during the September 10 episode of ‘Served’ podcast, Andy Roddick touched upon this very policy. 

In reply, Allaster stated, “It is the unpredictability of the length of the match. We know an average woman’s match is an hour 44 and an average men’s match is 2:45, so you’ve got a four or five-hour window. You start at seven, you’re finishing at 11:30, 12 on a good night, right?”

“And you tell me, you know, we introduced our late night, that we could change and move a match. And so there were two such, two situations, the Sabalenka match. It was getting past 11; we had Grandstand being held. A little bit of weather and I cringed at the idea of moving Sabalenka. I forget who she was playing to grandstand at midnight. No one’s going to watch that. No one’s going to be there, but we would have got her, got her on.“

She further went on to highlight, “Luckily, Novak did his favor, I think, won that in four. So we could turn it quickly. The other night, we held Armstrong.” The US Open Tournament Director said the broadcasters were there and even the ball crew were present at the venue, so they went on with it over there.

Aryna Sabalenka later spoke about the late start time after beating Alexandrova close to 2 a.m. at US Open. “That was an interesting decision in between matches to have this 1 hour and 20 minute gap. I was like ‘no way.. I’m gonna start at midnight’. And that’s actually what happened. That was tricky. We stayed with the team and tried to relax. Right before the match, we did our warm up, and we hoped for the best.“

However, she liked the fact that she got the chance to play at the Arthur Ashe Stadium. Unlike in tennis, most of the American leagues have collectively settled on midnight as a reasonable time for a sporting event to end. For example, NFL prime-time games begin no later than 8:30 pm, and rarely do the matches last for more than three and a half hours. Even in the 2024 NBA Finals Game, we saw matches getting over much before midnight. Why do we come up with these issues time and again in tennis, though?

Not only Aryna Sabalenka, but several other players have been complaining about the same in the last few years

The tennis governing bodies have decided that 2:00 am local time finishes are completely normal. According to Ahmad Nassar, the PTPA executive director, “It’s one of those things that oddly gets celebrated on social media, like, ‘latest match ever, the longest match ever.’” The match between John Isner and Nicholas Mahut at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships, which lasted for almost 11 hours and 5 minutes, is the longest in history.

Two years ago we saw a match between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner in the QF of the US Open, which lasted for more than five hours, ending at 2:50 am. However, this year, Alexander Zverev’s match against Tomas Martin Etcheverry at the R3 of the US Open nearly broke that record with a 2:35 am finish. This year’s one of the longest matches at the US Open was the match between Daniel Evans and Karen Khachanov, which lasted for almost 5 hours and 35 minutes.

After playing that marathon match, Zverev was heard saying, “I don’t need any more records of later finishes.” Even during the French Open, we heard Coco Gauff saying late-night finishes are “not healthy” for the players. Novak Djokovic said that a few things he felt could’ve been handled a bit differently. Even Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek expressed their dislikes on last-night finishes and that’s quite obvious from the players’ point of view. Aryna Sabalenka was so tired after her late-night finish at the US Open this year that she slept for almost 8 hours after that.

During the 2024 US Open, Andy Murray called the “tennis scheduling situation is a total mess.” While some others, like Pam Shriver also demanded a change in timings. She asked the tournament organizers to think of an early time slot for matches in the Arthur Ashe Stadium from next time onwards. Share your thoughts on this ongoing debate in the tennis world.