Miami Open boss opens up on ‘complicated’ talks as entire day of matches cancelled | Tennis | Sport

Miami Open tournament director James Blake has given an interesting insight into the world of scheduling – especially after a brutal first few days at the Hard Rock Stadium. A former world No. 4, Blake became the tournament director of the Masters 1000 event in 2018, overseeing the move to the Hard Rock from 2019 onwards. And it’s his job to go through scheduling requests from players, agents, the tours, media and rightsholders, and attempt tp put together an order of play that makes everyone happy.

As Blake told Andy Roddick’s Served podcast, that becomes increasingly complicated when the tournament is ravaged by rain. A whole day of WTA qualifying was rained off before the main draw began. Then, on Wednesday, day one of the ATP main draw and day two of the WTA event, all matches were cancelled as the heavens opened.

It left the tournament boss in a tough spot, and he was about to leave to speak with the ATP and WTA Tours about Thursday’s jam-packed schedule as he told the Served podcast exactly what those conversations looked like.

Well, it’s going to be going to both tours. And so actually right now, they’re waiting to do this together. A lot of times it’s earlier in the day, and I get a chance to visit with the WTA and the ATP separately and figure out, ‘Okay, exactly what do we want to do? How do we want the schedule to look?’ And they have their ideas. I have my idea. And it’s just kind of coming to a lot of compromises, which is a big part of what I do,” Blake explained.

“Okay, let’s see what works for WTA. Let’s see what works for the ATP. Let’s see what works for the media. Let’s see what works for the players. Because every day we also get requests, like you said, from agents, sometimes from the players directly, sometimes from the agents saying, ‘Okay, so and so doesn’t want’, it’s amazing. No one wants to play first, and no one wants to play last. So everyone wants to play second, third or fourth. And there are only so many of those spots.”

There are some technicalities when it comes to the order of play. All tournaments fill in a ‘master schedule’ months in advance, laying out when ATP and WTA matches will be played. Once the tournament is in full swing, Blake and the team must put the relevant matches into those slots, like a puzzle.

He continued: “So we have to go through that, fit it all in, and then make sure the media is okay with it, because they have to have a sort of a through line. The media for the World Feed has to have a bit of a through line to make sure there’s no break. I can’t put all women’s matches first, and then all men’s matches second, because then you don’t have anywhere for that World Feed that’s on the WTA side to go, they’ve got no match, they’ve got a break in dead air. So you got to figure out, Okay, how are we going to put this little puzzle together?”

And Blake knew that would only be more challenging with the constant rain on Wednesday, which ultimately meant all 37 matches on the original order of play were cancelled. “That’s kind of what I’m about to do, and it’s going to be a little more complicated right now, because now we need to fit so many more matches in with the fact that it’s raining and we’re possibly cancelling a whole day,” he said.

“That’s difficult early on, you know, how many matches are on right now, and players want to have a little bit of rest and a little bit of break, and we’re doing the best we can.”

They figured it out in the end, and Thursday’s order of play was packed with 50 matches across 10 courts. Alexandra Eala and Joao Fonseca got the day session slots on the main Stadium Court, while the likes of Venus Williams, Marin Cilic and 2021 champion Hubert Hurkacz were also in action.

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