French Open: Men's tennis more attractive than women's tennis? Tournament director feels misunderstood

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Semifinalist Rafael Nadal

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Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

The tournament director of the French Open, Amelie Mauresmo, has apologized for saying that women's tennis is not as attractive as men's.

The former French world-class player added that her comments had been taken out of context.

The background is the schedule of the games of the Grand Slam tennis tournament in the night session newly developed for the TV stations.

From the first Monday of the French Open to the quarter-finals, an evening game was on the program of the clay court Grand Slam tournament every day at 9 p.m. local time.

Nine of the ten games were matches between men.

The only women's match broadcast in prime time was France's Alize Cornet defeating Latvia's Jelena Ostapenko.

»Fighter for Equality«

Asked about the unequal distribution of night session scheduling, Mauresmo said at a press conference on Wednesday that the men's games have more "attraction".

She tries daily to find a pairing of women that has the star power or is the matchup worth highlighting.

"I admit it was difficult," Mauresmo said.

A day later, she told the Tennis Channel: "First of all, the comments I made were taken out of context." She apologized to the players who felt bad about their statements.

Mauresmo said that people who knew her would know that she was a "great campaigner for equality" and for women's tennis and for women in general.

Mauresmo said that from a tournament perspective, it is difficult to only offer a women's game to spectators who only buy a ticket for the evening session "because we have to take the length into account".

Mauresmo has a point: women need two winning sets at the French Open, men three.

This often leads to significantly shorter women's games.

The quarter-final match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer lasted four hours and twelve minutes, the game between Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek only 64 minutes.

In addition, there had been hardly any critical voices from the women's tennis world.

Only Swiatek had said after her semifinals that she thought it was a shame.

The night sessions are considered unattractive among the players due to the weather conditions and generally because of the late time (the game between Nadal and Djokovic was only fixed at 1.20 a.m.).

Tournament Director Mauresmo said they are now considering changing the format.

From next year they want to have the opportunity to play two games in the evening - or maybe a women's game and a doubles game.

Mauresmo won the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006.

After retiring as a player, she switched to coaching and worked with Andy Murray, among others.

bka/AP/Reuters