Roland-Garros’ first female tournament director Amelie Mauresmo has apologised for saying women’s tennis has less appeal than the men’s game, claiming she was quoted “out of context”.
A former top player and two-time grand slam champion, Mauresmo has been heavily criticised after nine of the championship’s 10 night sessions were men’s matches.
World No.1 and title challenger Iga Swiatek found Mauresmo’s comments about the lack of attraction around women’s tennis extremely disappointing.
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“I want to say sorry to the players that really felt bad about what I said,” Mauresmo told the Tennis Channel.
“The comments I made were taken out of context.
“The people who know me, who’ve known me on and off the court, throughout my career, throughout everything that I’ve done, know I’m a big fighter for equal rights and women’s tennis, women in general.”
A former winner at the clay-court grand slam, Swiatek, who will meet American Coco Gauff in Saturday’s final, has played all of her six preceding matches during the daytime.
The only night session to feature a women’s match – part of a deal with a streaming service – was France’s Alizé Cornet‘s victory over Jelena Ostapenko in the second round.
In her first year at the helm of Roland-Garros, Mauresmo said it was challenging to put women’s matches on late with the evening session only including one match for spectators, but the tournament would adjust the format of the sessions in future to strike a better balance.
“I didn’t decide to have this one match,” she said.
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“Next year to be more fair to the women’s players it would be good to maybe have the possibility to put two matches or maybe a women’s match plus a doubles match.
“Concerning the scheduling, specifically for the night matches, my say was that because we have one match only, it’s really tougher to schedule a woman’s match because we have to take into consideration the length. It’s the fair thing to do for the ticketholders.
“We will try to find a better solution to be fair to everyone. We tried to modernise the event, move forward and there are some adjustments to be made.”
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