Novak Djokovic‘s late finish at the 2024 Roland Garros opened up a discussion about late tennis matches, and Carlos Alcaraz came out against it.
A few years ago, there was a relatively late night session in Paris, which featured a match that started at 9 p.m. local time. That was not popular among players, and the event changed it to 8:15 p.m., which is the case this year, but in the case of Djokovic, it didn’t start at that time.
His match against Lorenzo Musetti started just short of 11 p.m. local time and lasted well over four hours, finishing around 3 a.m. That late finish opened the topic up, as some players were asked about it, including Alcaraz, who is not a fan of late matches.
“Well, for me I don’t like night session, but not for the crowd. I think that the crowd in night 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. It’s not only the last ball.”
“We have a lot of important things to do. And Novak, I’m sure he went to go to sleep at 6 a.m., and the last point finished at 3, something like that. Three hours, you know, between the last point until he went to go to sleep.”
Many players mention this exact point when discussing this situation because that’s how it is for the players. They have to consider all of that, and going to bed that late is obviously not ideal for recovery, which is important for the rest of the event.
“It’s really difficult to recover when you are going to go to sleep so, so late. I mean, for me it’s much better to finish at 6, having dinner at a restaurant, a good restaurant, good food (laughing).”
“So everything is better if you finish early. You know, the night session is a real thing, so we can’t change it. We have to adapt ourselves as much as we can to the matches.”