Radical Changes Spark Outrage in Doubles Tennis
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At the U.S. Open this year, doubles finds itself at a crossroads.
The artful, delicate game that most tennis fans play, but oftentimes do not watch, is scheduled for exploratory surgery after the year’s final Grand Slam concludes. To a man, it seems, players fear it may die on the operating table.
In three men’s tournaments following the U.S. Open, sets will be shortened to six games with a tiebreak at 5-5. Game scoring will no longer include advantages: Once a game reaches deuce, the next point wins.
The goal, according to the ATP, which approved the changes earlier this summer, is to shorten doubles matches and make them more predictable, and hence more attractive to top singles players. The star power would give tournament directors a reason to schedule doubles on center courts and give television stations a product that sells, the ATP claims.
If the three-week experiment does not create the desired effect, more drastic measures – like sets to five with a tiebreak at 4-4 – will be taken over the following three weeks. The ATP said it even would consider offing the third set entirely, forcing teams to play a decisive tiebreak after they split sets. None of the changes would apply to Grand Slam events, which are overseen by the International Tennis Federation (ITF),not the ATP. The women’s tour has not announced any changes yet, but it will be watching the men closely.
The proposal has met with near-unanimous scorn in the tennis world. Doubles players openly fume that the ATP,a players union, is siding with tournament directors rather than the players it represents. In New York City this week, the top 60 doubles players held a clandestine meeting in preparation for an undisclosed challenge to the rules that they will announce Friday at a press conference. The proposed changes, they say, not only threaten their livelihoods, but the integrity of their sport.
“We just want to knock this proposal out of the water,” Bob Bryan said yesterday, after he and his twin brother Mike scored a 7-6 (5), 1-6, 6-3 first round win over Sebastian Grosjean and Arnaud Clement. Mike Bryan said the ITF and the United States Tennis Association, which runs the U.S. Open, are backing the players against the changes.
“It’s not going to be pretty because definitely players are against it, and tournaments are pushing for change,” said Max Mirnyi, one of the world’s best doubles players and the top seed, with Jonas Bjorkman, at this year’s tournament. “Doubles doesn’t have much credibility now as it is. The whole thing, in my opinion, would just go down the drain.”
In the future, the plan may hurt the pocketbooks of doubles-only players, too. While those who have not met with singles success currently can earn a living playing doubles, by 2008 only the top six or eight teams will be allowed into a doubles event if they are not also playing singles. Teams the caliber of the Bryan brothers, who are seeded no. 2 here, would be spared, but others would be out of work.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Wesley Moodie, a South African who, along with his partner, Australia’s Stephen Huss, is seeded no. 13. “It’s just going to confuse the fans.”
At the center of the changes is Horst Klosterkemper, the recently appointed president of ATP Europe and a longtime volunteer tournament director in Germany. For the last 10 months, Klosterkemper, 66, has chaired a committee of ATP staff, tournament directors, and player representatives in a study of doubles. Tournament directors were questioned, television executives called upon, and more than 4,000 fans polled. While Klosterkemper says he is pained by the vitriol of angry players, he believes the time for change has come.
Klosterkemper, a retired civil engineer, told a story about the French Open this year, where he said fans packed Centre Court to watch two women’s semifinal singles matches. It was late afternoon, prime viewing time in Paris, he said. Then, doubles was announced.
“Do you know how many people left?” he said. “Ninety percent. Nine-O percent. It really hurt me.”
Klosterkemper estimated that $12 million a year is spent on doubles during ATP events that populate the months leading up to Grand Slams. In return, he said, tournament directors receive little to nothing, since doubles does not sell tickets. In terms of percentage of total prize money, winnings for doubles teams have decreased consistently for the past 10 years. Doubles, he said, has essentially become a charity event for players, rather than a selling point for tournament directors who might want to put it on center stage, perhaps sandwiched between two singles matches.
“We at the ATP and in tennis have to listen to our consumers,” he said. “The bait on the fishing pole has to be enjoyed by the fish, not the angler.” He said that under the ATP’s plan, tournament directors have agreed to increase marketing and sustain prize money and the size of doubles draws (generally 32 teams in ATP events) over the next two years.
Bjorkman, a 15-year pro who has won 42 doubles titles, said he did not mind the idea of playing a tiebreak at 5-5, but that it ought to be considered for singles, too.
“If you are changing it just for the ATP [doubles], it’s going to look stupid,” Bjorkman said.
The bigger problem for Bjorkman, though, is that the best singles players have told their doubles colleagues that they will not play, no matter the rules. Andy Roddick has even said so publicly, and Bjorkman understands why. It is no longer the 1980s, he said, when players the caliber of Mats Wilander could expend little effort in their first few rounds of singles, leaving energy for doubles.
“They even came up with things like, they were not allowed to go to the net – tried to find a challenge to beat some guys because they knew they were going to win,” Bjorkman said. “The competition is stronger now.”
As for fan interest, Bjorkman points to Wimbledon, where he said doubles is well-attended. At the U.S. Open yesterday, fans watching Wayne Black and Kevin Ullyett battle Paradorn Srichaphan and Giorgio Galimberti on Court 8 outnumbered those watching a rising women’s star, Ana Ivanovic, on Court 7. Then again, even more people watched James Blake practice with Xavier Malisse on Court 5. The Bryan brothers, however, outdid any match of the day (excluding those played in Arthur Ashe Stadium), as they packed the Grandstand.
The fact that fans are willing to watch at all, players say, means that doubles might just need a good dose of inspired marketing, not wholesale revisions. Mirnyi, Moodie, and the Bryan brothers complained that tournament directors do not even deign doubles players worthy of their programs. The directors, Mirnyi said, should not have the option to host a tournament without doubles.
“Whether you want it or not, it’s not up to you,” he said. “If you want to host a singles tournament, doubles is just a package – it comes with it.”
To Klosterkemper’s mind, doubles has to please more people and play to bigger audiences. He said he was not trying to attract the Roddicks and Roger Federers of the world, but perhaps more top 10 or top 20 players. He said discussions with players inside the top 100 suggested that many would take up doubles – and play it more frequently – if matches did not last as long. Klosterkemper’s goal is to reduce an average best-of-three sets doubles match, now clocked at an hour and 36 minutes, to no more than an hour and 20 minutes, perhaps shorter.
“I really feel for the guys, because they are earning their living,” he said. “But we can’t solve cancer with aspirin.”