French Open recap: Why was the roof closed for Carlos Alcaraz vs. Lorenzo Musetti?

New York Times

18 hours ago

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Welcome to the French Open briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.
On day 13, the Court Philippe-Chatrier roof caused controversy, a strange sequence of tennis results cohered and court assignments yet again let women's tennis down.
It was a beautiful afternoon in Paris on Friday, but the 15,000 fans and two players inside Court Philippe-Chatrier wouldn't have known it. The French Open organizers closed the roof for the first men's semifinal, between Carlos Alcaraz and Lorenzo Musetti, which ended up a win for the defending champion after Musetti had to retire with an injury to his left leg.
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It had rained a bit in the morning, and there were some gray clouds floating around, but there was outdoor tennis going on everywhere else at Roland Garros, even on Court Suzanne-Lenglen, which also has a roof.
Grand Slam tennis is supposed to be an outdoor sport. Roofs generally close when rain is imminent or after it has begun, and the Chatrier roof takes around ten minutes on its slide out over the terre battue. It's hardly a long intermission. The tournament didn't issue any official explanation for the decision, but a guide to the roof — published on the Roland Garros website in 2020 — states:
'Any match that starts with the roof closed will continue that way until the end of the match. If the weather improves and play can continue in the open air, the referee may decide to open the roof at the end of the match for the following encounter.'
None of this appeared to make much sense. A quick glance at weather forecasts showed no chance of rain until Saturday morning. The gray clouds changed to fluffy white ones gently scudding across a blue sky. There was some wind, but nothing compared to the whipping air on Chatrier that greeted Musetti for his quarterfinal against Frances Tiafoe on Thursday. Any concerns about achieving parity of conditions on a changeable day would fade with the fact that French Open matches are not weighed against each other. Deliberately seeking the same conditions across any two matches would go against the nature of an outdoor event with some covered stadia, given that the entire tournament briefly becomes a two-stadium indoor clay event when it rains.
The move appeared to have a major effect on the Alcaraz-Musetti match. Chatrier gets dank once the roof closes. The ball stops flying. Alcaraz's balls, which would kick up off the clay in warm, dry conditions, were sticking in the now-soft surface and now staying right in the Musetti strike zone. It's part of how he won the first set and pushed the second to a tiebreak.
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When he had to retire, it was time to get the stadium ready for the night match — and to open the roof. So much for having the same conditions for both semifinals.
Matt Futterman
Tennis is full of strange sequences of results that don't really make any sense, especially when they traverse the rungs of the professional game.
A couple of months ago, Jelena Ostapenko, who is a bit of a law unto herself, beat then-world No. 2 Iga Świątek and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka en route to winning the Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany. In her next match, at the Madrid Open, the Latvian lost to compatriot Anastasija Sevastova, 35, who was playing her first WTA event for more than a year because of a serious knee injury. Sevastova duly lost her next match 6-0, 6-0 to Diana Shnaider of Russia.
Lilli Tagger's win against Emerson Jones in the semifinal of the French Open girls' singles on Friday presents another circle of tennis life. In March, Tagger, a 17-year-old Austrian, picked up a straight-sets win against a similarly unheralded Frenchwoman at an ITF (the third and lowest tier of professional tennis) event in Spain.
That Frenchwoman was Loïs Boisson, who was on Thursday competing in the French Open semifinal against world No. 2 Coco Gauff. Boisson was just back from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear when Tagger beat her, but it remains reminder of how fine the margins are in tennis. Most players in the top 200 to 300 have a story of beating a player who themselves beat a big name in the sport.
Maybe Britain's Hannah Klugman is next in line. The 16-year-old faces Tagger in the girls' final Saturday.
Charlie Eccleshare
French Open organizers say that they don't discriminate against women when they schedule matches each day. They make decisions on what is in the best interests of the sport and its spectators, they say.
Friday, with Court Philippe-Chatrier occupied by the men's semifinals, Court Suzanne-Lenglen and Court Simonne-Mathieu were ready to seat around 10,000 and 5,000 fans respectively.
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There were three matches on Suzanne-Lenglen. First came a men's wheelchair semifinal between Tokito Oda and Martín de la Puente. Then came the men's doubles semifinals, which saw Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski beat Christian Harrison and Evan King.
Court Simonne-Mathieu seats about 5,000 people. The women's doubles semifinals took place there. The second pitted Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini against Mirra Andreeva and Shnaider.
That was a rematch of the Olympic women's doubles final, and the fifth instalment of a developing rivalry at the top of the game. Paolini is a two-time Grand Slam finalist in singles and she and Errani have become one of the most formidable doubles pairs in the game. Andreeva, 18, is a rising star in women's tennis and Shnaider is coming on strong. Both teams laugh their way through matches and have proven to be solid drawing cards when they play at big events.
The match didn't turn out to be very good, with Errani and Paolini winning 6-0, 6-1. On paper though, putting this match on the smaller court was a bit of a head-scratcher.
Matt Futterman
It's already been a good tournament for British players, with three men in the singles third round for the first time in more than 50 years, and three women into the second round. Last year, there were no British women or men in the second rounds at all.
Friday was a good day too, with Klugman beating Bulgaria's Rositsa Dencheva to become the first British junior to reach a singles final at the French Open in 49 years. A winner of the prestigious Orange Bowl junior championship, Klugman is looking to make it two girls' Grand Slams out of three for the Brits, after Mika Stojsavljevic's U.S. Open win in September.
Elsewhere, Salisbury and Skupski beat King and Harrison on Court Suzanne-Lenglen to reach the men's doubles final. Salisbury has won four men's doubles Grand Slams, all on hard courts, while Skupski is a former Wimbledon champion. Neither has won Roland Garros — nor has any Brit in men's doubles or singles in the Open Era.
They take on Argentina's Horacio Zeballos and Marcel Granollers of Spain, the No. 5 seeds, in Saturday's final.
Charlie Eccleshare
Tell us what you noticed on the 13th day…