Top-ranked doubles duo Bob and Mike Bryan won their first Australian Open in January, but their trip to New York City last Friday was not meant as a victory tour.

Instead, the Bryans were in town to promote their sport, long the most popular version of recreational tennis and seemingly on the mend after a season of upheaval among professionals. The much-maligned men’s doubles game now has its own commissioner, its own sponsor (Stanford Financial) and its own marketing campaign. At non-Grand Slam events, there is a new scoring system, too – one that players could live without, but that they will live with at least for now. Among men like the Bryans, there is, for once, a sense of hope that their artful trade is not steps from extinction.

Indeed, doubles has made an aboutface since last year. At the U.S. Open in September, players were facing radical changes.Tour officials had determined that they could market doubles more easily if matches were shorter, so they proposed reducing sets at non-Grand Slam events to first-to-six or first-to-five, with a tiebreaker at 5-5 or 4-4 and no-ad scoring (after deuce, the next point wins). The third set would be jettisoned, replaced by a super tiebreaker (first to 10 by two).

Even more troubling for doubles players, the tour hoped to require, by 2008, a high singles ranking to enter doubles tournaments, except for a few of the elite doubles teams. Doubles players feared they would be out of work in favor of an exhibition event for men who cared more about singles. Dismayed by the tour’s proposals, the players, led by the Bryans, filed an antitrust lawsuit in federal court during last year’s U.S. Open.

Whatever the legal merits of the suit, as a marketing and bargaining tool, it was a stunning success. It garnered media attention, provoked reactions from champions like Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe, and gave players a chance to gripe about being secondclass citizens in their own union. Six months later, doubles is different from doubles in 2005, but not as different as had been planned.

Sets are now first to six with a tiebreaker at 6-6, but with no-ad scoring and no third set. The idea of a singles-dominated entry system has been replaced by one that allows players to participate based on either their singles or doubles ranking.

“Obviously the remaining sore spot is the scoring aberration,” John F. Sullivan III, a partner in the Houston office of Fulbright & Jaworski who represents the players, said. “But I think the momentum is going in the right direction.”

Sullivan was quick to credit the new ATP chairman and president, Etienne de Villiers, a former Disney executive, for backing this compromise and listening to the players. “I think he is pretty well regarded by both sides, and I give him a lot of credit, quite frankly, for doing his job well,” Mr. Sullivan said.

For the players, the marketing initiative is paramount. Doubles specialists routinely complained that their names and faces did not appear on promotional materials at tournaments, and only rarely on the tour’s Web site. Now, the ATP plans to advertise their game in print and on television as a “revolution” in the sport, with emphasis on faster points, added pressure on decisive deuce points, and the Bryan brothers’ trademark celebratory chest bump (one ad shows early man evolving into the Bryans).

Players have suggested other ways of attracting attention, such as holding Pro-Am events with fans and reporters, and hosting more clinics for local juniors. McEnroe, 47, did more than his share last week when he won his first professional doubles event since 1994 with the help of Jonas Bjorkman. McEnroe’s 78th career doubles title, at the SAP Open in San Jose, Calif., included wins over the no. 2 and no. 3 seeds.

Whether doubles ultimately succeeds, however, may depend on how it plays on television. The ratings from this year’s Australian Open final, between the Bryans and the team of Leander Paes and Martin Damm, offers some hope and some concern.

The men started sooner than expected, owing to Justine Henin-Hardenne’s default in the women’s singles final.According to ESPN2, which broadcast the event, the women’s final averaged 839,000 homes,though that number began to fall quickly as the trophy ceremony neared its conclusion at 11 p.m. on a Friday evening. The doubles final held about 500,000 homes for the first 45 minutes, dipped to about 340,000 for the next hour and 15 minutes, but regained viewers – up to 450,000 homes – for the next half hour (it ended at 1:30 a.m. EST). Overall, it averaged slightly less than 400,000 homes, according to ESPN.

Yes, there was a steep decline in viewers from singles to doubles,but the fact that the high level of quality in the match – frankly, it could not have been better played – was able to retain a reasonable number of homes and even gain some after 1 a.m. must be taken as a positive.

Perhaps a lot more marketing from the ATP and the three-year deal with Stanford Financial can bridge the gap, or convince tournaments that there is a reason to schedule doubles matches on main courts and in view of television cameras. At the least, it seems the tour is willing to be patient before proposing more changes. When a sport has not been nurtured in years, one cannot expect it to it return to full health overnight.

tperrotta@nysun.com