Tunisia's Ons Jabeur gestures during her women's singles quarter final match against Coco Gauff on day ten of the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros Complex in Paris on June 4.DIMITAR DILKOFF/Getty Images
Three years ago, a British medical study attempted to identify the optimal time to go to sleep.
The study linked heart health with sleep patterns. It found that people who sack out between 10 and 11 p.m. have the best outcomes.
It’s still more important that you get enough sleep, and that your bedtime pattern is regular. But if you’re one of those bio-hacking, I’ll-be-parasailing-on-my-90th-birthday types, 10 p.m. is what you’re looking at.
If that is the life for you, then forget major-league sports. Playing them or watching them. Sports goes late these days, and later all the time.
NHL, NBA and MLB regulars are used to being dragged into talkshow time slots once the games get important. They’re too beaten down to imagine a full night’s rest. But tennis pros are still vigorous enough to complain.
Tunisian star Ons Jabeur lost a quarter-final on Tuesday at the French Open. Her match started at 11 a.m. It’s not exactly the crack of dawn, but she wasn’t happy about it.
“Playing in the afternoon is better,” Jabeur said. “There is going to be more people watching us.”
Jabeur was also unhappy that only women have played in the first session so far at the French, and that some men’s matches have gone very late into the night. She is unhappy on behalf of the media (“Even for you, the journalists, I don’t think it’s healthy”) and the ball boys and girls. Basically, she’s unhappy that tennis players can’t work when they prefer to do so. Join the club.
Her comments were recycled Tuesday afternoon when Novak Djokovic withdrew from the tournament. He’d played one five-setter until 3 in the morning, and then another the same day starting at 4 p.m. A knee injury is the explanation, but overwork is the cause.
“Who said the stadium was full for 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.?” said Jabeur. “I don’t know who is watching matches at that time.”
I do. They’re watching them in New York (where it’s 7 p.m. local), and Buenos Aires (8 p.m.), and Beijing (7 a.m.). Think of a major media market anywhere that’s not Europe, and 1 in the morning Paris time is a reasonable window in which to be watching sports.
The reverse is true during the U.S. Open. That’s when people on the Eastern seaboard complain that 2 a.m. is a ludicrous time to be playing tennis. Unless it’s morning in Paris, where you can catch a couple of sets before starting work.
The players’ anger is understandable. They wanted to grow tennis into a global concern so that they would make a lot more money and, having done that, they can’t forgive themselves. If everyone around the world is watching your game, there is no correct time to start. What’s important is that tennis is on for as much of the time as possible. Twenty-four hours a day would be best.
You know who doesn’t play in the middle of the night? Lawn bowlers. Bocce obsessives. Bridge clubs. Pick a sport that no one buys a specialty cable package to watch and they are consistently competing at a salubrious hour.
Athletes complaining about the time sports starts is akin to them complaining that they play too often. Of course they do. You have to pay the players, keep the broadcasters happy and justify the cost of buying a modern sports franchise. The only way to make this work is by creating content all day, every day.
Real Madrid just signed Kylian Mbappé on a free transfer. Not that it was free. In order to get him to come, Real gave the 25-year-old French superstar a reported $185-million signing bonus. That’s not his salary. It’s a welcome gift.
You think Real Madrid is going to tell this guy to ease into things? He’ll be playing everywhere, permanently.
He’ll play the season in Spain, the Champions League in Europe and the off-season in China, America and the Middle East, plus the Euros and the World Cup. If Mbappé ever wants to take a proper holiday again, he’ll have to close a car door on his own foot.
The intensity of sports – both in terms of effort and scheduling – has begun to break down elite athletes. No baseball pitcher can be taken seriously until he’s had at least one reconstructive surgery. Women’s soccer is overrun, literally, by an epidemic of ACL tears.
People inside sport are on the hunt for obscure causes – is it curveballs thrown at too young an age or a certain brand of field turf? – when the answer is obvious. It’s too much sports.
Stop playing, practising and travelling six days a week, while also filming a Netflix doc and obsessively creating social-media bumpf, and then see if there is any reduction in muscle tears. Please send my consulting fee care of The Globe and Mail.
But there is no stopping. No sport can afford to ease back. Once they do, someone down the ladder will reach up and pull them off. The players understand this. They complain about the scheduling for the same reason they yell at officials. Maybe it will gain them a small, individual advantage. If not, no harm in trying.
For decades, tennis has owned women’s sport. Now basketball and soccer are coming up in the rearview. That means more hype and more stars playing more frequently in more markets at all hours of the day and night.
If the players wanted to stop, they could. There’s nothing the WTA or ATP (or any other league) could do about a concerted work action that includes the biggest names in the game.
But the Novak Djokovics of the world understand this much at least – however hard it is to drag yourself around a tennis court on a bad knee five hours past your perfect bedtime, it can’t be anywhere near as difficult as watching someone else do it instead of you.