I would love women to play five sets, says Amelie Mauresmo

Amelie Mauresmo, tournament director at Roland Garros, would "love" to change the women's final to best-of-five sets.

Last year Mauresmo became the first former grand slam champion to take on a directorial role at a major event, and is also the first woman to do so at the French Open.

With one edition now under her belt, the former Wimbledon champion told Telegraph Sport that she felt "more prepared, relaxed and knowing exactly where I want the tournament to go" – and that could include a drastic change to the format for the women's event.

Although she says best-of-five sets would not work for the entire women's tournament, due to scheduling restrictions on site, she believes it could happen for the latter stages.

"What I’ve always thought, and this was also as a player, I would love to play a grand-slam final best-of-five or how it was at the year-end WTA championships," she said. "That is something that I would have really loved, and it’s definitely something that I would really think about, if that would add something to women’s tennis."

Currently the women play best-of-three sets at all of the major events, while the men play best-of-five. There was a brief period during the 1990s when women played the longer format in the final of the WTA tour-end event.

Asked about the feasibility of introducing longer matches from the quarter-finals onwards at Roland Garros, Mauresmo said it would need to be phased into the women's tournament over a few years.

"Maybe quarters, or maybe semis. The thing is, you cannot change it just like that. Because it asks a different preparation from the players. It would go through a different process of several years, maybe you start with the final."

Gender equality on show courts is 'tough'

Mauresmo, 43, courted heavy criticism during her debut year as tournament director for scheduling men's matches for nine out of 10 night sessions on the main show court in Paris. Embarrassingly

She even had to apologise for saying the men's matches had "more attraction" in this era of tennis than women's.

The noise is unlikely to go away this year, as the first three night matches scheduled on Philippe-Chatrier have been men's matches, despite Frenchwoman and fifth seed Caroline Garcia playing her opening round on Monday.

Mauresmo still sticks by her decision-making and says she is happy with how things went last year.

"The first year was not easy, coming into the tournament I felt that I still had everything to learn. I knew it, and it’s what happened. A big part of my job is also scheduling, and I was pretty happy about last year and how I handled the thing, because my player past made it quite natural for me to know how it should be. That was ok."

She has previously expressed her surprise about the backlash she received, which included world No. 1 Iga Swiatek saying she was "disappointed" by the tournament director's comments.

Mauresmo's playing career – which included winning two major titles, her landmark appointment at Roland Garros and her coaching experience with Andy Murray – make her a leading female figure in tennis and she acknowledged that there was "probably" more pressure on her to prioritise gender equality because she is a woman.

But the added scrutiny has not tempted her to guarantee a 50-50 split of men's and women's matches for the showpiece evening slot this year. "Because we are a unique example [among the four grand slams] of only one match scheduled in the evening, it makes it quite difficult to know in advance," she said. "Some people asked me before this edition: 'So are you going to do five men's matches and five women's matches?' I don’t know. For me the priority in equality is definitely to have two women and two men on each court every day.

"It’s a tough one. There is no perfect solution here. Because we have 15,000 people buying tickets for that match for 10 days so I’m really thinking about what would be the best match of the day. I cannot think at the moment differently on that. But other than that, I believe we are quite equal in pretty much everything that we do."

'Our era was great for women's tennis'

Mauresmo admits that women's matches being best-of-three-sets weighs heavy on her mind when scheduling, because it will almost certainly mean a shorter match for fans to enjoy, than if she chose a men's match.

However she is confident that the burgeoning rivalry between the world's top three – Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina – will shift attention onto women's tennis. She compares the situation to the early 2000s when Mauresmo, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Justine Henin, Kim Clijsters and Maria Sharapova were among those who ruled.

"I definitely think [ours] was a great era," she said. "We were a group of eight or 10 players that were really all the time in the later rounds of tournaments, grand slams and also the others. I think it was good for the crowd at the time. We were coming back in people’s face every week almost. So I think it’s a good thing for the people who were following, but also not that much following tennis.

"It hasn’t been there in the same way, but also it’s a fact that the depth of the women’s game has improved quite a lot in those 15 or 20 years, so it’s more difficult to have that consistency towards the end. The three players now – I’m thinking about Iga, Aryna and Elena – are actually showing that it’s coming, it’s there, they are getting to that consistency. Or already there for some. So I’m hopeful and definitely confident that they can really do it. That’s what’s been working in the men’s side. Men or women, it would work in any sport to have rivalries, it makes people more interested in the outcome."