I agree and that is why a shot clock is so important in major tournaments. I went round and round with Barry B. about this at the U.S. Open several times. It only takes one slow match to throw you behind schedule. That said, trying to play too many players on too few tables in too short a time and you will ALWAYS end up with matches going off after 2 AM and players having to come back at 10 AM. Been there, seen that way too many times. Try playing a full field of 128 players on eight tables in one weekend. Even Races to Seven 9-Ball is too long in this scenario.
I'll give you a good rule of thumb (actually it's simple math) to see how many matches you will need to play. With 128 players (DE), you double that number to 256 and subtract two, for a total of 254 matches that needs to be played. If you have sixteen tables available, you will need to play thirteen full rounds using all sixteen tables to reach the final thirty two players! Now double that number to 256 players (510 matches!) playing on sixteen tables, and twenty six full rounds of play to reach the same point and you will undersand why it took six full days to get down to the final four players. The first time Matchroom did this (a couple of years ago) and wanted to do it in a much shorter period of time (four days total) I advised them to have a minimum of 32 tables available. And they did. Once again without a shot clock and no way to speed up a slow match, you can get in trouble. At the Open I used to have to warn players when their match was running too slow. Since Barry never provided me with any time shot clock people, I enlisted volunteers and would use my one stop watch and after that have to rely on a watch with a second hand. We still had matches going off after Midnight on several occasions, which was unacceptable to me.