The Professional Tennis Players’ Association (PTPA) co-founded by Novak Djokovic have insisted that late-night matches have negative consequences for everybody involved in the sport, not just the players. It comes after recent complaints from the likes of Alexander Zverev and Andy Murray, who have been left frustrated after being made to play into the early hours of the morning.
Wimbledon is currently the only Grand Slam with a curfew to stop matches from going on into the night as they often do at the Australian Open, French Open and US Open. Other smaller tournaments, such as this week’s China Open, have also seen players finishing later than expected on a regular basis.
The PTPA have responded by underlining their stance against letting matches go on into the early hours, posting on X: “Late-night matches don’t only harm players. They have negative consequences for fans, ball kids, event employees, and all stakeholders involved.”
The post included a comment from PTPA executive director Ahmad Nassar, who added: “Some tournaments have a curfew, which is laudable. Some tournaments have no curfew and seem to revel in late-ending matches and almost taking a victory lap when a match ends at 2am, 3am or even 4am local time.
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“That from a playing perspective doesn’t really make sense and neither does it make sense from a fan perspective, a broadcasting perspective and any commercial partner perspective. If you look in the stands and zoom out from the exhausted players at those matches, the fans are mostly gone. They have jobs, they have families and things to do, they just need to go to sleep.”
Zverev recently became the latest player to call out tennis chiefs over the issue of scheduling at the China Open, with the 26-year-old being taken to three sets by Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in a match that did not start until after midnight.
He said: “Obviously, it’s difficult to play til 3am. I’m not sure it was the right call to keep us on this court. I think we should’ve changed courts. We should’ve gone on. There’s so many great courts on the stadium, so many opportunities where we could’ve played. I’m not sure we should’ve waited til past midnight to start the match, to be honest.”
Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that changes will be made at next year’s Australian Open in a bid to minimise late-night finishes. The event will now be staged over 15 days instead of 14, while day sessions on the main show court have also been reduced after Murray was among the players to express his frustration back in January.
The two-time Wimbledon champion’s second-round match against Thanasi Kokkinakis did not finish until 4:05am, with Murray branding the scheduling a ‘farce’ at the time.
“I don’t know who it’s beneficial for,” he said. “We come here after the match and that’s what the discussion is, rather than it being like ‘epic Murray-Kokkinakis match’, it ends in a bit of a farce. Amazingly people stayed until the end, and I really appreciate people doing that and creating an atmosphere for us. Some people obviously need to work the following day and everything.”
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