In a rare late-night highlight, Aryna Sabalenka and Naomi Osaka will contest the first women’s evening match at the French Open since 2023. The highly anticipated Round of 16 clash is scheduled for Monday, not before 8:15 PM CET.
This marks only the fifth time a women’s singles match has been featured in the prime-time evening slot since the introduction of the format five years ago. The duel between the Belarusian world number one and the Japanese star is a significant event.
The limited number of evening matches for women at the Parisian clay-court tournament has frequently sparked debate and criticism. In the past two years, organizers had entirely omitted women’s matches from the evening session. Prior to this year, only men’s singles matches had been scheduled for late-night play on Court Philippe-Chatrier.
«The organizers are afraid that a women’s match will be over in an hour,» commented Eurosport expert Boris Becker before the announcement. «I don’t understand it either.» He believes that women, who play best-of-three sets, should also be scheduled in the evenings, regardless of match duration.
French Open: Naomi Osaka is «Really Unbothered» by Match Times
For Osaka, who is reaching the Round of 16 at Roland Garros for the first time, «it really doesn’t matter which court or at what time I play,» she stated on Sunday. The Japanese player mentioned that she is «so used to not playing evening matches here» that she «doesn’t associate the French Open with evening matches at all.»
The match between the world number one and the 16th seed is by far the most compelling fixture on Monday. In stark contrast, none of the four scheduled men’s Round of 16 matches feature two seeded players. Italian world number one Jannik Sinner and the top-seeded Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech, who could have met in the last 16, have already been eliminated.