ROLAND GARROS

June 8, 2025

Amelie Mauresmo

Press Conference

AMELIE MAURESMO: Thank you for being here for this quick overview before the final day for everybody here in Roland Garros.

So when I took this position in 2022, it was with this desire and the objectives that we all had to bring this tournament into the modern world, whilst preserving our traditional DNA of the tournament and also to do everything we could to have as much emotion as possible so that each person who comes here feels this emotion.

And this 2025 edition of Roland Garros is very satisfying. I'm a very happy director today in front of you with regard to everything that's happened, with, of course, this final day that is ahead of us and that we hope will be absolutely magnificent.

So, to begin with, beyond the opening week, to begin with the very strong emotions for Rafa's match, I think we began the tournament in the best possible way by paying homage to this player who has a particular history with the Roland Garros tournament and his 14 wins.

It was the right way to pay homage to him with emotion, quite legitimately, and Rafa as a man and not just the tennis champion that we know.

On the sports side of things, we had two very high-quality draws. The parity is there on the men's and women's side, which above all, at the end of this tournament is offering us some crazy matches, some very high-quality matches.

Yesterday the women's final was very tight, and we hope that today's men's final will also hold true to its promise.

On the French side of things we had a wonderful story with Lois, who has had an incredible trajectory here. A wonderful, promising player for French tennis. We see that the public, the television viewers want to see the champion go as far as possible in the tournament. That was very important and really has contributed to the popularity of the Roland Garros tournament in this edition of 2025.

Our objective for a number of years now has been to make the tournament more accessible, and for this of course we set up the opening week, which has meant that we have beaten a record in the number of spectators at the tournament. 680,000 people have come to Roland Garros over the past three weeks. That is the final figure, including today.

But, also, we have allowed people -- and you saw this in the Concorde in Paris -- to watch the tennis altogether free of charge in front of the giant screens and to also have this Roland Garros experience in a slightly different way with a crazy atmosphere.

I don't know if you saw the pictures, but there were some fantastic moments there, despite the weather, which was not always easy. But the public really wants to share these emotions, once again, around Roland Garros, and this was a major success.

More than 25,000 people were there onsite, and I think that we will end up with more than 30,000 this evening, last Sunday of the tournament, and the winners will be presenting their trophies onsite to the public.

There will be Coco Gauff who will be present between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. over there. We really want to take Roland Garros out of the stadium, and that was a great success also.

I think that we have also properly questioned ourselves on a set number of points that we mentioned last year in this end-of-tournament conference. I'm thinking in particular of the programming of the men's semifinals.

I said, yes, everything is not perfect, and we're going to try to work on it and find solutions, because you know, the stands were not filled as much as they should be. So this year we have these two distinct time slots, which were quite well spaced apart, so it worked well.

Be it for the second men's semifinal, and I'm thinking of when the players came onto the court also yesterday, the women's players, we adopted measures that worked, and I think that we can also be proud of that.

We know that not everything is perfect, and we must continue to work on other moments of the day and other things, and we will be continuing our reflection on these aspects. In any case, that worked.

Also, putting the spotlight on wheelchair tennis in Lenglen with the stands that were quite well filled, and that is also a very positive point for all of us.

So that's it quickly. We have some great viewership on television on the women's match, 13 million. More than 6 million for Lois's match. We're not going to go over all of the figures, but it was a wonderful edition.

So these are the points that I wanted to put the spotlight on this morning with you.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. A question on Rafa Nadal. Beyond the homage paid this year and his presence in the Only at Roland Garros campaign, are you going to give him a sustainable role in Roland Garros? Does he want to forge a more permanent return of the tournament by occupying a position in the tournament?

AMELIE MAURESMO: As we said, this is our common desire of the tournament and to Rafa to have a form of collaboration.

Of course, we, first of all, focused on what was going to happen this year between the communications campaign and the homage, but of course we will be resuming our discussions so that this common story that the tournament has had with Rafa over the past 20 years may continue in one way or another.

So, yes, there is a common desire, and we will find out how to do it, but I'm very confident in that.

Q. This venue hosted a very important event, the Olympic Games. I'm wondering if you had any opportunity to review what was done during the event that wasn't organized by you and maybe you thought to incorporate some of the experience they had doing that into the tournament? Second question is, while walking through the grounds, I've seen that the line to get into the store, to the boutique, was always very, very long. I was wondering if there's something that you want to do about that?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Okay, so, first of all, for talking about the Olympics, we were not the official organizer, but the teams were really involved in the organization. So, yes, we definitely reviewed many things and took a few things here and there that we thought would be good for Roland Garros, good to evolve, to make the tournament evolve a little bit. I am thinking about the music and maybe some things you see less.

We learned from it definitely and tried to take the best things that we could see and incorporate in the Roland Garros.

Then talking about the line in the boutique, we can't do much about it. We would like to have more space, different places that people could buy some things, but as you know, for now we have this venue, and we need to have many other things. The food. Yeah, at the moment, we know. We are aware of this.

Q. Can you talk about the virtual queue?

AMELIE MAURESMO: The teams are working on trying to have a better experience about the boutique definitely because it's always something we want to improve. It's not that easy also in terms of depending how the match goes. Everyone is coming out of the match, so everyone wants to go at the same time at the boutique or same time to have food and everything.

So, yeah, we work on this and try to make it better each time. It's not so easy.

Q. You talked about the new schedule for the men's semifinals. Obviously the second one started at 7:00 p.m., and you've been resistant to having a 7:00 p.m. start time for the night session because of your worries about the crowds not being full at 7:00 p.m. But the crowds were full at 7:00 p.m. for that one. So I'm just wondering, seeing that, would that make you potentially reconsider that in the future for the rest of the tournament?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Well, for the most it was like - how do you say - test and learn experience on one specific match. So, you know, everything can be open definitely. We always try to learn from the experience that we have from the new things that we put in place for the future.

But I would like to say also that the night sessions, 8:30, 9:00 night sessions were also really successful with full houses from the beginning or at the moment when the players start the match until the end of the time. So we'll see. We can be open, that's for sure.

Q. Congratulations on everything you've run through there. There's a lot that goes into this tournament, I know. You were with us just over a week ago, and you did say, Let's wait until the final Sunday to see how the schedule ends up having gone, depending on what the matches are. We are here now, and it is a fact now that for two years running there have been no women's matches in the night session. Since we last spoke to you, Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Jessica Pegula, Ons Jabeur, and former players Lindsay Davenport and Pam Shriver have all expressed their disappointment with no women's matches in the night session. Would you accept that they have expressed that disappointment, and really something does need to change in the future?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Well, what I'm thinking, and yes, the other time when we spoke, I always talk about the length of the matches, men compared to women. I always also said that the entertainment is there in both cases. I think we wouldn't be having this conversation if we would have the same format for both games, because in my opinion it's the length or the possible length of the match that is making it hard for us in terms of scheduling.

Q. Would you propose that they, therefore, play the same format in the future to ensure equality?

AMELIE MAURESMO: I'm just saying that if we had the same format, we wouldn't be having this conversation. That's what I'm saying.

Q. Scheduling is probably the worst job at any tournament. Just two questions. First one on scheduling. With the finals days, would you consider putting the doubles before the singles final?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Yeah, for yesterday you mean?

Q. Yeah.

AMELIE MAURESMO: Or Saturday?

Q. Saturday and Sunday. So put the doubles finals first and then the singles finals. The women's doubles is after the men's.

AMELIE MAURESMO: No, it's now.

Q. Sorry. I misread. Okay. The second question is, you've been doing this now for three years.

AMELIE MAURESMO: Fourth edition, yeah.

Q. What's tougher, being a player and winning a major or doing this job?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Yes, being a player (laughing), for sure.

Q. Amelie, you were talking earlier about trying to find a mix between modernity and tradition. So you have the night sessions on the Suzanne Lenglen. That is a possibility, and that might allow us to avoid some disputes. In terms of tradition, we're talking about the line judges, their lacking training. Is there a reason why they wouldn't be there next year?

AMELIE MAURESMO: For the first question with regard to the night session in Suzanne Lenglen, after each edition we think about what we're going to do in terms of scheduling of the matches. We have our end-of-tournament seminar that happens very soon after the end of the edition because we really want to think about it hot off the press and ask the right questions. So that is one of our questions.

We decided to put it to one side due to the capacity of the stadium. But these are questions which come back every year. We also try and look at the consumption of the public and the spectators who come to the stadium, what we can change, what might evolve.

So in two weeks' time we will have our seminar, and we will be asking these questions once again. I know that when we talked about it the first time, it was the capacity of the stadium, the flow in the stadium that was a problem. Could we organize things differently? Well, we will certainly look at this question.

What was your second question? The line judges.

Well, first of all, it went very well. I'm touching wood because there's one day left to go. We will have a final overview at the end of this day. But generally speaking, we had a very high level, indeed, and this is a very great satisfaction for us, because as you know, we are the last of the Mohicans to some extent with the line judges. So we will also be looking at that question again.

We raised that question last year. We will be looking at it again this year with the possible openings, the pluses, the minuses, you know, in what way would there not be line judges next year. I don't really have the answer to that, but we will look at that question.

Last year when we talked about it, the idea was that the electronic refereeing on clay courts, we haven't had so far. We looked at the experience of previous tournaments, which was quite fluctuating, and things were not very coherent in terms of reliability. We couldn't say that the system was very reliable.

So we decided to preserve this choice of maintaining our line judges. And this is a discussion that we will have with the teams to see where we want to move next year or not. The question remains open.

Q. I know you've indicated in the past that the contract with Amazon Prime Video who has the rights to the night session has been restrictive in terms of being able to put best-of-three-set matches there. It has been reported this week that Amazon Prime had requested at least one of Lois Boisson's matches to be played in the night session, and that that request was declined by yourself, the tournament. Can you confirm that? If so, why was that declined?

AMELIE MAURESMO: I will never comment on TV requests, player requests, any other request that we might have, so I'm not going to answer that question. That's for sure.

Q. Amelie, there's been a lot of discussion recently among the top 10 worldwide around the distribution of the prize money in the Grand Slam. As a former player, are you sensitive to these demands, and what is your position on this?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Well, I'm very happy that the communication has been engaged, you know, directly. This is the former player speaking here. There are no go-betweens who might have interests that lie elsewhere or different interests from the players.

So I think that, you know, when the communication is there, I'm quite confident on the fact that things will evolve in the right direction for everybody. I think that when the real figures are communicated, I'm quite sure that things will go in the right direction, quite simply.

The objective is that things go in the right direction, that it be something positive for everybody.

Q. A rather different sort of question because will be talking about it no doubt in the press in the coming weeks. Lois Boisson is going to discover grass. Can you do well on grass if you have never played on it?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Has she never played on grass yet? So, yes, of course it's possible. Historically for players it's a surface that requires a little bit of experience. That's for sure. So, let's see...

But, you know, grass has also changed in recent years. There are many years it's been slowing down. There are specificities with regard to the height of the bounce. You can see there can be rallies on grass. So I think that this will possibly help her.

Then there's the joy of discovering something new as well. That's the way it is. You have to keep an open mind and say, Okay, it's not that I'm going back to zero. That's not it at all. But you are adjusting.

The idea is to make these adjustments as fast as possible so that the game that is produced is adapted to the surface.

I think that this adaptation compared to 20 or more years ago, it's a bit of a smaller gap.

Q. When you look at the crowds at the start of the matches between Gauff and Sabalenka and Gauff-Swiatek and compare it to the crowds at the start of the matches between Zheng and Sabalenka and between Gauff and Keys, they were the first match of the day on Chatrier. Lots of empty seats. How do you improve that atmosphere going forward, because it seems that it is a real disadvantage for the women's players to be always given that match first on Chatrier?

AMELIE MAURESMO: As I said, it was not all perfect in this tournament. We are aware of this, and we will definitely work on the solutions that we can find for the future.

There's not much other than this. I said in French that in two weeks we have our debrief all together and definitely talk about these subjects and see how we can make it work better.

Q. Sinner and Alcaraz, are we faced with a new era, a new rivalry that we experienced before between Nadal and Djokovic or Rafa and Federer?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Yes, well, of course because they're both there in the final today, it's not by chance. They're there due to their ranking. Given their age, we can imagine that they will continue to progress and continue to evolve the game also, because I think that men's tennis will continue to evolve.

We wonder how it's possible after the era of the big three or the big four, but yes, we might imagine that these players will be there for a long time. They already have an extremely high level, considering their age, and already some incredible wins for their age.

Necessarily, we can imagine that they will be there for a long time with an underlying rivalry that will really, you know, get the tour going.

Q. Just a point. You said you were working on the other times of the day, other than the night session. Can you tell us about this? Is it the first matches at 11:00?

AMELIE MAURESMO: Yes, with regard to filling the stadium, that is something that we are continuing to think about and working on.

It's not easy. You know, the way that the spectators can attend the matches or consume has changed. They stay in the stadium for seven or eight hours. There's a lot going on, so they choose different things. There are other things to do and try out and experiment.

This is also the other side of what we offer outside, so we need to find the right balance.

Q. A sort of similar question twice. If you've been through the whole tournament now and there have been some highs and some things that are maybe lows, if it's put that way, if you had to pinpoint for yourself a highlight that has really caught you these last couple of weeks, what might that be? And then, I know you said you've got the debrief soon after. If there's one thing straight in your mind now that you would like to adjust or change, what might that be?

AMELIE MAURESMO: So the first question is difficult because many, many things are happening in the last three weeks.

If you want to get out of the sport, or it's kind of the sport also, but more historical moment is Rafa on center court, on Chatrier, getting the love from everyone, from the crowd, from organization, from the other big players of his era and how touching he was also in that moment.

I think those images, the stadium, the colors, the harmony in all of this is probably what stands up and will stay, yeah. That's important.

And, then, we've talked for the things that we're going to address, definitely the seats, and we will think again about the scheduling and the seats. Those are the common things and constant things we are challenging all the time.

As you said, there are many things that are going into those decisions.