Midday arrivals at Melbourne Park on Tuesday might have been surprised to see Mark Philippoussis and Marcos Baghdatis knocking the ball around on Rod Laver Arena.

In an Australian Open where farcical finishes well after midnight have again highlighted the challenges of scheduling, planning a legends doubles for 12pm was a head scratcher.

The song and dance made by Tennis Australia in October about the decision to add a 15th day to the schedule, supposedly to negate late finishes, rang hollow at the time.

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There was no change to the start time for the night session on the main stadium court and the tournament always ran the risk of matches stretching onwards into the early morning.

If anything, those buying day session passes to Australia’s premier court were short-changed with the reduction from three singles matches to two without a price discount.

But the schedule held firm for the first nine days at a tournament where, the regular late finishes aside, there has been much to like about the quality of the tennis and also the innovations around a mammoth site stretching from near the city to just shy of Richmond.

At midday, or nearabouts, competitors have walked onto Rod Laver Arena to begin a singles match. As will be the case on Wednesday.

But it changed on Tuesday. And it resulted in high farce.

Instead of Marta Kostyuk and Coco Gauff warming up at midday as the first of four high-quality singles matches listed for RLA, the Scud was instead banging down missiles to Thomas Johansson and Robert Lindstedt in a legends doubles match.

When Gauff and Kostyuk played a marathon quarterfinal lasting 3hr 8min, night session ticket holders would have been rightly concerned about what was about to unfold.

By the time Novak Djokovic and Taylor Fritz took 16 minutes to complete the opening game of their quarterfinal, it is certain TA’s senior hierarchy were also gnashing their teeth.

Fritz levelled the quarterfinal with Djokovic at one set apiece at 7.06pm, which effectively reduced the contest to a best-of-three match between the two combatants.

That was six minutes later than when Aryna Sabalenka and Barbora Krejcikova were due to step on to RLA to a welcome from fans who had purchased night session tickets.

Djokovic ultimately took three hours and 45 minutes to beat Fritz 7-6 (7-3) 4-6 6-2 6-3 in a match that finished at 8.28pm. An extended interview between Nick Kyrgios and Djokovic finished at 8.36pm.

Organisers moved swiftly to ensure Sabalenka was on court shortly after 9pm. It is a good thing the defending champion is in good form, for had her match extended beyond straight sets, Jannik Sinner and Andrey Rublev might still be going!

Scheduling in tennis is always fraught. There is no fixed match length. But it is indisputable TA shot themselves in the foot by scheduling a later start on Tuesday for the quarterfinals.

Was the decision made to suit the American broadcaster and its audiences given the presence of the popular US Open champion Gauff in the opening match?

The later start ensured Gauff was playing at 9pm on the US east coast and still going three hours later at 9pm when the west coast of the nation reached that time. It is a massive audience to serve and a boost for the broadcaster.

It is not the only scheduling quirk which suggests broadcasters, which pay significant sums to purchase the rights, are being catered to as a result.

After Chinese star Qinwen Zheng drew a massive audience in her homeland for her 3rd Rd clash against compatriot Yafan Wang, she will feature in prime time on Wednesday night.

It is a rarity of a women’s quarterfinal to be played on the Wednesday night given either Zheng or Anna Kalinskaya will have to back up 24 hours later, but that is the case this year.

And instead of a 7pm start, which has been the firm starting time throughout the tournament, the quarterfinal is listed to begin 15 minutes later.

It is only a minor delay, but the decision will push Carlos Alcaraz’s clash against Alexander Zverev further into the night as well.

Does it matter?

The sun will come up on Wednesday and Linda Noskova and Dayana Yastremska will walk onto RLA for the biggest match of their careers at midday. And the Australian Open is billed as the grand slam of the Asia-Pacific, so there is some logic to scheduling Zheng at 7.15pm.

But is it right or fair?

Even among the record attendances this Australian Open has drawn through the gates, it is hard to imagine many would answer yes.

SO WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Fritz, certainly, has sympathy for those who have been forced to dance in the dark until the early hours at Melbourne Park this year, noting that it is extremely difficult for players to recover when matches stretch through to the following day.

“(It) just screws up your whole clock. I pray for those guys,” he said.

“If they end up doing that, then they can at least get scheduled at that time for the rest of the tournament. Because if you have to turn around and play in, like, the afternoon on any of the other days, it just completely messes (with) your sleep schedule.

“It’s not easy to go out in the middle of the day in the heat and play three-out-of-five sets, especially when your body clock isn’t on it. Like, I get it. Matches go long some days. Today ,in particular, my match was long, the match before us was really long.

“But there’s got to be something they can do where people aren’t playing until 2am, 3am, because I don’t think people really fully understand how much time we actually have to spend doing stuff after we finish playing as far as ice baths, treatment with physios, massages, all this stuff. If you finish at 2am, there is no chance I’m going to sleep until 5am, 6am.”

Djokovic pointed out that the semi-final will be played on Friday, which provides ample time to recover. But he also noted tournament director Craig Tiley faced a difficult challenge balancing conflicting interests.

“There are different ways to address this,” he said.

“Maybe scheduling less matches on the center court, doing it in one session, which is most likely not going to happen, because every session carries a lot of economical value for them.

“And TV broadcasting? There’s a lot of elements that are in play, you know. TV broadcasting pays a lot of money to the tournament and sponsors the tournament. So obviously, you know, at the end of the day, they are the ones drawing the line and saying, ‘We want to see this player at that session or et cetera, et cetera.’

“Even though, of course, Craig Tiley here, who is a great person, and I respect him a lot, and he’s always trying to do his best for the players, he’s a tournament director and he’s obviously trying always to communicate with players and take their opinions and consideration.

“But … TV broadcasting channels have the biggest power. We know that. Which is not unusual because … they are the ones that are giving us the stage, the platform to reach out to millions of people around the world, which is great for us. It’s hard to say what the best scenario is in this case.”

TOP SIX MEN MAKE FINAL EIGHT

That Djokovic and Fritz slugged it out in hot conditions for almost four hours is not necessarily a surprise given the talent of the men’s quarterfinalists.

Although the head-to-head was all one-way traffic in favour of the world No.1 prior to the match, Fritz is a vastly stronger competitor than the player who pushed Djokovic to five sets here in 2021.

While the top half of the women’s draw was ravaged with upsets, the world’s top-ranked men have adjusted best to the conditions at Melbourne Park this year.

The 2024 edition of the AO serves as the first time in the Open era where the world’s top six players have progressed to the last eight.

This had happened only three times elsewhere in the Open era, which began in April 1968, with Roland Garros hosting the cream of the crop 1983, 1984 and 2012.

Every quarterfinalist at Melbourne Park in the men’s draw was ranked inside the top 12 players in the world.

Alex de Minaur and Stefanos Tsitsipas, who reached the 4th Rd, Casper Ruud (3rd Rd) and Holger Rune, who exited in the second round, were the casualties from the top dozen.

In terms of the quality by seeding, this AO has been surpassed only by the quarterfinals of the French Open in 1984, which featured eight players ranked inside the top 11.

MIDNIGHT MADNESS CONTINUES

The midnight madness that has afflicted Melbourne Park for almost the entirety of the Australian Open shows no signs of abating.

But there may be a reason why the long days are stretching into longer nights and then edging onwards towards dawn. And it is not solely related to scheduling, though that is clearly an issue.

The good folk at Opta Ace have provided an analysis of the length of matches throughout this Australian Open and found that the average length of matches have increased significantly.

The summation covering the last nine years has found that women’s matches are taking on average six minutes longer to complete than any other year in the survey at 1hr 44min.

Similarly, men’s matches this year are also taking the longest time during the period assessed at 2hr 57min, which is five minutes longer than the previous record set a year ago.

This year’s record is 30 minutes longer than the quickest average match length during the survey, which was set in 2017, a year the courts played faster than usual.

It is no coincidence that in 2017, the respective champions were Roger Federer and Serena Williams, superstars who excelled when the court conditions were faster.

AUSTRALIAN OPEN – AVERAGE TIME ON COURT (1st to 4th rounds)

2024

Women: 1 hour and 44 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 57 minutes

2023

Women: 1 hour and 38 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 52 minutes

2022

Women: 1 hour and 37 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 41 minutes

2021

Women: 1 hour and 33 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 28 minutes

2020

Women: 1 hour and 36 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 33 minutes

2019

Women: 1 hour and 32 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 38 minutes

2018

Women: 1 hour and 37 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 35 minutes

2017

Women: 1 hour and 35 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 27 minutes

2016

Women: 1 hour and 34 minutes

Men: 2 hours and 28 minutes

The elongated match lengths this year date back to the opening round, when 31 of the 64 men’s matches went for longer than three hours, with 11 of those lasting beyond four hours.

An unprecedented 20 matches in the opening round lasted five sets, which was four more in the Open era than the previous record of 16 which occurred in the 1996 and 1998 editions.

On Tuesday, when the day session started an hour later at 1pm, the opening match on centre court between Coco Gauff and Marta Kostyuk didn’t wrap up until 4:20pm – and Novak Djokovic’s clash with Taylor Fritz was midway through the opening set well over an hour later.

The ensuing delay to the night session was not completely tournament organisers’ fault, of course, but starting at midday – like every other day session had done over the last week and a half – wouldn’t have hurt.

There’s no simple solution to the broader problem either, as long as men’s slam matches remain at five sets, unless tennis moves aggressively to try and speed up matches, much like baseball did in 2023 – with a pitch clock and other changes cutting over 20 minutes from games, to widespread acclaim.

THE SMALL TOWN OF CHAMPIONS

There is clearly something in the water in the Netherlands town of Woerden, which has a population of just over 50,000 and sits between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague.

How else to explain the remarkable fact that 16 of the 22 Australian Open wheelchair women’s singles titles have been claimed by three different players from the town?

On Tuesday, the most dominant player in tennis Diede de Groot began her campaign to win her fourth Australian Open title, and seventh overall, in warm conditions at Melbourne Park.

The 27-year-old, who has the social media handle “Diedithegreat”, is unbeaten in the sport since a loss in a lead-in tournament in Melbourne to the delayed Australian Open in 2021.

She is the winner of 20 grand slam singles titles and a further 17 doubles majors.

Such is her dominance in the division, she said in Paris last year that she had resorted to working on shots mid-match to maintain her focus, though it is worth noting she almost lost last week to world No.2 Yui Kamiji when forced to save match points.

Despite her remarkable resume, de Groot cannot lay claim to the title of being the best player to come from her hometown given the deeds of Esther Vergeer, who is now 42.

Vergeer won 21 grand slam singles titles but never had the opportunity to play at Wimbledon, which held a wheelchair title for the first time in 2016.

After a loss to Australian wheelchair trailblazer Daniela de Tori in 2003, Vergeer went unbeaten in the sport for ten years and ended her career on a 470 match winnings streak.

During this period, she won 120 tournaments and defeated 73 different opponents while only once facing a match point in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing.

In usual circumstances, dual-Australian Open champion Jiske Griffioen would be the most celebrated athlete in her hometown, but sits a distant third on the honour board in Woerden.

The No.3 seed in the Australian Open, the 38-old is a Paralympic gold medallist who has won four major singles championships and also completed a doubles Grand Slam.

After the retirement of Dylan Alcott a year ago, the Dutch are also dominating the men’s quad wheelchair ranks, with Niels Vink and Sam Schroder topping the seedings for the tournament.