A little scheduling consult with Rybakina?

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MONTREAL – It was an off-day for Elena Rybakina, who will play No. 30 seed Dayana Yastremska in the fourth round of the Omnium Banque Nationale on Saturday.

And after the practice, she got a little visit.

It was WTA supervisor Mohamad Chahir Fitouhi – one of four assigned to this tournament – who arrived on court with a sheet of paper in his hand.

Now, we didn’t get close enough to paparazzi it. But a best educated guess was that it was a preliminary order of play for Saturday. And that he was getting some input from Rybakina (who seemed engaged) and her coach about their requests and/or preferences about when she wanted to play.

Here’s what it all looked like.

We’ve written about this before, often when people jump all over scheduling decisions in large part because they feel like their favorite got a raw deal.

But there are so many cooks stirring that soup. In the end, not everyone is going to get what they want.

In this particular case, the fact that rising young Canadian Victoria Mboko, despite being a wild card, will be on the sked for Saturday will certainly be a big factor. The Canadian rightsholders broadcasting the tournament will certainly want her match against Coco Gauff – who also happens to be the No. 2 player in the world and the No. 1 seed – in the most advantageous slot. So will the tournament itself.

That also has two elements: which slot needs the biggest ticket sales boost (if either the day or night session does). And which is likely to get the best ratings.

Normally, the answer to both would be the night session. But this being a Saturday, that’s a bit of a different beast – the ratings are likely to be better in the day session. But the ticket sales ALSO are likely to be better for the day session.

The winners of Rybakina/Yastremska and Gauff/Mboko aren’t scheduled to meet in the quarterfinals. So there isn’t an issue of equal rest – as in: if one plays the night session the other would more likely to be a late match on the other court, or as close to the same start time as possible. To make it fair for the next round.

But in this case, with this eternally-long format, there are only four singles matches on the schedule, and all are on the stadium court.

Gauff also is still alive in the doubles. So that was another issue. If she had to play her quarterfinal match Saturday, she would have to play her singles during the day because that comes first.

Again, in this case, that wasn’t an issue as she and McCartney Kessler had to wait for the winner of a match that will only be played Saturday.

By the standard of modern tournament scheduling, this one was pretty simple.

The final answer: Gauff v Mboko at 6 p.m. Rybakina second up, not before 2 p.m.