TENNIS ICON CALLS FOR MAJOR CHANGE TO SPORT AFTER US OPEN CHAOS

Retired tennis star Pam Shriver wants to see something change after several late-night finishes at the US Open.

Aryna Sabalenka and Ekaterina Alexandrova broke the record for the latest match start in tournament history and several contests have been played into the early hours over the last week.

Andy Murray has already slammed the extreme schedule. Shriver now wants to find a way to "speed up" matches after a record-breaking finish.

As well as Sabalenka and Alexandrova's 12.08am match start, there have been two more unwanted records this fortnight. Alexander Zverev and Tomas Martin Etcheverry recorded the second-latest finish in tournament history, with the German winning their third-round contest at 2.35am.

In a rematch of the recent Olympic gold medal match, Qinwen Zheng beat Donna Vekic at 2.15am last night (Monday) - the latest US Open women's match finish. Vekic's coach has now called for change, proposing an earlier day session and a way to radically speed up matches.

"Pro tennis we are crazy to have some our most important matches being played in the middle of the night," Shriver wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter). "@usopen starts on Ashe Stadium at 12pm plus takes too long between sessions. Let's trade 12am-2am match times for 10am-12pm tennis on Ashe. Let's study how to speed up matches."

Shriver then took things a step further, writing a letter to the United States Tennis Association. According to The Telegraph, the former world No. 3 wrote: "Kudos to both Zheng and Donna for playing one of the best matches of the year in the middle of the night. It's an unacceptable situation that's not humane for world-class athletes.

"The men playing five sets is the main culprit plus starting Ashe Stadium at 12pm, especially once matches get more competitive in the third round. The USTA were the first to allow for equal prize money and bring final-set tie-breakers into major tennis.

"It's time to study what changes in the three-of-five format should be made. It's not sustainable given depth of field and average length of matches to keep the format the same."

Shiver isn't the only one to speak out. On Monday, Murray tweeted: "The tennis scheduling situation is a total mess. It looks so amateurish having matches going on at 2,3 4am. Sort it out @usopen @AustralianOpen @Wimbledon @rolandgarros @atptour @WTA @ITFTennis".

The US Open has yet to respond following the backlash. A new policy was introduced ahead of this year's tournament in an effort to prevent the late finishes. In a press conference last month, tournament director Stacey Allaster announced: "We've had late matches here.

"We will still have late matches here. We are now defining a policy. In the event that we have the second match of the evening in Ashe or the last match in Armstrong, if those matches have not gone on by 11.15pm, the referee will have the discretion to move the match. That's going to depend on many variables, like do we have the broadcast team ready, do we have a ball crew, so forth."

But Sabalenka and Alexandrova's match was not moved when they found themselves waiting for Novak Djokovic's match against Alexei Popyrin to finish last week. Sabalenka later explained that the players were consulted and decided to wait for the result of the fourth set. If the men's match had gone five, they would have moved courts.

2024-09-03T17:05:59Z dg43tfdfdgfd