A 12:13am start, and a record nobody wanted
Venus Williams and Sofia Kenin made US Open history on Monday for the wrong reason. Their first-round match on Arthur Ashe Stadium began at 12:13am local time, the latest start the tournament has ever produced. It ended just before 2am.
The pair were supposed to play on Sunday evening. Novak Djokovic and Mariano Navone took almost five hours to finish ahead of them, and the schedule collapsed from there.
What followed was worse than the delay itself. With midnight approaching, organisers decided to shift the match to Louis Armstrong Stadium. Williams and Kenin walked across the grounds, arrived, and were then told Djokovic and Navone had just finished. Back they went to Ashe.
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Kenin won it, then thanked the survivors
Kenin came through 6-2, 7-6 (9-7) in front of a crowd that had thinned but not emptied. She acknowledged as much on court.
“Thank you guys so much for staying, I know it’s 2am,” she said. “Here playing in New York, I love it here. Second night session on Ashe, you can’t ask for anything better. I’m grateful to be on this court, I absolutely love it here.”
Williams was less forgiving in her press conference. “I’ve never played a match that late before. It’s not ideal. I would have preferred something else. I think it wasn’t great for either of us,” the seven-time Grand Slam champion said, adding that there was room for improvement.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Navratilova went further than criticism. She proposed a rebuild of the night session format.
“It was the latest start for a women’s match ever. After midnight, and it could have been later. Tennis is the only sport that does this. I think it’s crazy,” she said.
Her suggestion: put a men’s singles match on first, then a doubles match. Or open with the women’s singles, follow it with doubles or a second women’s singles. Either arrangement guarantees at least four sets of play without stacking two potentially five-set matches on the same court.
“Even if you put the women’s match on first and it’s three sets, the guys start by 10pm. If a men’s match goes five sets, you start at midnight,” she said. “You’re never on the court at midnight and you never start a match at midnight, so it’s counterproductive for everybody, spectators and the players.”
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