The Australian Open has come under fire for its scheduling once again as fans were left waiting until 10.06pm for Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev to take to the court for their quarter-final. The night session was delayed for a presentation, with Qinwen Zheng then taking two hours and 20 minutes to defeat Anna Kalinskaya in her own quarter-final match. Before the women had even finished, the Australian Open started to receive backlash for how late it would be when the men’s match began.
The Australian Open has been hit with several late-night finishes this year. The worst came last Thursday when Daniil Medvedev won his second-round match at 3.40am but the post-might contests continued, with Jannik Sinner defeating Andrey Rublev at around 1.30am after starting their match on Tuesday night. And it was the same story on Wednesday as the quarter-finals continued.
The night session, which usually starts at 7pm local time, was pushed back for a ceremony to induct Lleyton Hewitt into the Australian Tennis Hall of Fame. Zheng and Kalinskaya started their match at around 7.30pm, contesting an hour-long first set, and it meant that the backlash over the men’s quarter-final began before Alcaraz and Zverev took to the court after 10pm.
The tournament posted an Instagram video of Alcaraz playing football in the players’ area behind the scenes just after 9pm local time. They were quickly inundated with comments from disgruntled Australians who couldn’t stay up and watch the match. “Your schedule is terrible,” @dylstuckett wrote.
“This game won’t start until 10pm if we are lucky, on a work night. You’re scheduling these games to suit the rest of the world, forcing Australian to stay awake until all hours of the morning if we want to watch a game of tennis. It’s not fair, and we deserve a little better than this. Looking forward to seeing if Alcaraz won tomorrow morning when I wake up for my 7am shift. Goodnight.”
@royfus added: “the Aus open does it again.. s****y scheduling and the mens quarter final pushed to 10:30 which means in all likelihood they will be playing until at least 2am. What a disaster. Why not start the women an hour earlier?? Wtf” Another used referenced Sinner’s late-night win over Andrey Rublev while voicing disappointment.
“As an avid TENNIS LOVER who looks forward to the AO every year it’s very disappointing that I don’t get to see some of the biggest matches such as the Rublev & Sinner match from last night to tonight’s Alcaraz & Zverev match as they’re just way too late to watch,” @hivybivey wrote.
“Your tv audience, as well as the court spectators not to mention the players are affected because you can’t figure it out. There are no matches currently playing on MC or John Cain right now ?? He Such a shame a multi million $$ organization can’t work it out ?!”
The backlash continued on X (formerly known as Twitter) as fans took issue with the delayed start to the women’s quarter-final, which pushed everything back. “Alcaraz/Zverev is going to start after 10pm, once again not ideal. A shame Kalinskaya/Zheng didn’t begin earlier than 7:30pm…” @LaurenceRosen said.
@ToddScoullar replied: “Every other night session starts at 7. But let’s put some potentially long quarter finals on a little later…. That’ll be quality scheduling….! Makes zero sense.” With Alcaraz and Zverev playing a best-of-five set match, they will need to play a minimum of three sets. It means that they will likely be playing beyond midnight even for a straight-set result, and even later if the match goes to four or five sets.
