The French Open featured exciting action at this season’s tournament at Roland Garros, but there was one major problem that tournament director Amélie Mauresmo needs to address: empty seats.
Amélie Mauresmo knows Roland-Garros leaders must find an answer(Image: 2025 Stéphane Cardinale – Corbis)
Director of the Roland-Garros tournament Amélie Mauresmo will address the problem of empty seats for the first matches before next year’s Roland Garros. Women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka – beaten in Saturday’s final by Coco Gauff – and Olympic champion Qinwen Zheng played one of the biggest clashes of the tournament in the quarterfinals.
But as the match began at 11 a.m., the vast Philippe-Chatrier court was almost deserted, and many French spectators were eating lunch instead.
Mauresmo said: “We are aware of that and we will definitely work on the solutions we can find for the future. In two weeks we will do our debriefing all together and definitely talk about these topics and see how we can make this work better.”
The lack of women’s matches in primetime night sessions remains a hot topic, but Mauresmo once again stressed that this was only because the men’s best-of-five sets matches were longer, ensuring good value for ticket holders.
“I think we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we had the same format for both games, because in my opinion it’s the length or the possible length of the game that makes it difficult for us in terms of scheduling,” she added.
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The French Open remains the last of the four Grand Slam tournaments to still use line judges rather than power line calls, which are currently considered unreliable on clay.
Former Wimbledon champion Mauresmo said the standard of line judging was good at the tournament, but admitted the issue was still up for discussion.
“Generally speaking, we had a very high level and it’s a very great satisfaction for us, because, as you know, we are sort of the last of the Mohicans with the linesmen,” she said.
“We will look at the question again this year, to what extent would there be no linesmen next year. I don’t really have an answer to that question, but we will look at that question.”
American Gauff was crowned the new queen of clay on Saturday afternoon after beating Sabalenka in a thrilling final. She won 6-7 (5-7) 6-2 6-4.
Victory saw Gauff win her second Grand Slam singles title and become the first American woman to lift the trophy since Serena Williams in 2015.
