Break Point: The Battle Over the Future of Tennis
One of the world’s most tradition-bound sports is changing its rules in an attempt to appeal to a younger crowd, but not everybody is happy with the game’s new lookBreak Point: The Battle Over the Future of Tennis
One of the world’s most tradition-bound sports is changing its rules in an attempt to appeal to a younger crowd, but not everybody is happy with the game’s new look
Anastasia Rodionova was fixing her ponytail before the start of her doubles match when she heard her name crackle across the on-court speakers. “I got a time violation today before the match, and I was a little bit in shock,” she said after her second round at the Australian Open. “I actually had a problem with my hair tie and I couldn’t tie my hair. I was already standing. I was all ready to go, but my hair tie got caught and he gave me time violation!” Rodionova, naturally, was displeased. “I don’t think it’s right. I understand it’s from the TV point — that’s what they’re trying to push — but it’s a little bit too much.”
Rodionova, a longtime Ruso-Australian doubles player, was referring to the rule changes introduced by the International Tennis Federation in an attempt to modernize the sport. At the end of 2017, the ITF unveiled a handful of Grand Slam modifications that would go into effect in 2018 and 2019: an increased time limit between points; an adjustment to tournament-withdrawal policies, in the hopes of encouraging withdrawal for injured players and limiting the number of retirements during matches; and, much to Rodionova’s chagrin, a strict enforcement of the five-minute pre-match warm up, in an attempt to shorten schedules. Then there is the attempt to shake up the first week of Grand Slams: starting in 2019, the ITF intends to reduce number of seeded players in the 128-player slam singles draws from 32 to 16, as was the case until 2001.
Most have understood these changes as an attempt to advance the sport of tennis, and to recruit new audiences in the process. But tennis is a sport besotted by its own traditions, and so, even a whisper about change can spawn an oppositional army. The players themselves are often the first line of defense for conservatism. “For me, it’s a mistake. A clear mistake,” said Rafael Nadal when asked about the proposed 16 seeds. Former world no. 1 Karolina Pliskova was even more uncompromising: “I would not change anything anymore,” she said, laughing. Others at the Australian Open, and especially retired players, were more open to the adjustments. “As a player, I would not be a big fan of it,” 2002 Australian Open champion Thomas Johansson said of the proposed seeding changes. “As a spectator, I’m very much for it. Because then the draw is quite important. You could have blockbuster matches.”
Goran Ivanisevic, who won Wimbledon as a wild card in 2001, was so passionate on the subject of seeding that he promptly began firing off all his own unsolicited propositions at lightning speed. “Sixteen seeds is much better than 32. That’s how we played,” he said. “Maybe [they could add a] tiebreak in the fifth set. … You’re going to have a faster, better, more interesting tennis.” After decades of the sport being driven by the popularity of its stars, the changes can be seen as an attempt to put the focus on the game itself. Gimmicky as many suggestions are, the drive to modernize tennis is, in part, a push to create a product that can consistently sell itself. But many players themselves are yet to be sold on it.
The first thing to know about tennis in 2018 is that it is a conflict-riddled mess. The ITF, the WTA, and the ATP govern the Grand Slams, the women’s tour, and the men’s tour respectively. Historically, these organizations and their conflicting objectives have damned aspects of the sport to stagnancy. The immovable pillars of the four Grand Slams limit the evolution of the ATP and WTA calendars, while the length of the WTA and ATP seasons suffocate the ITF’s Davis and Fed Cup team competitions. The discussion about the unhealthy length of the tennis season, which runs from January until November, hasn’t changed in decades. Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka, Andy Murray and Nadal — four of the five most accomplished male players on the planet — all arrived in and left Australia with injuries.
But players are trying to shift the power balance of the sport. On the eve of the Australian Open at the annual ATP player meeting, Novak Djokovic reportedly attempted to convince his colleagues to unionize in order to gain a greater slice of the tournaments’ revenue in prize money. Djokovic initially distanced himself from the story, insisting there were “no talks about that.” However, after he and Gael Monfils suffered in the 100-degree heat during their second-round match, the Serbian spoke about feeling like a cog in the tennis machine. “Our sport has become an industry, like most of the other global sports,” he said, scanning the room like a politician. “It’s more business than a sport. At times I mind that. I don’t like that. … You have to understand what the player goes through. When I say you’re part of the industry, you’re just adding up events there. There is no indication that we’re going to have any form of discussion for a shorter season or anything like it.”
While parts of the sport remain rooted in the past, others are looking toward the future. Last year Roger Federer’s sports agency combined with Tennis Australia, the USTA, and other factions in the tennis world to create the startlingly successful Laver Cup, an event pitting a European team against a world team in tennis’s answer to golf’s Ryder Cup. (Team Europe, led by Federer and Nadal, took home the first trophy.) In November the ATP debuted its Next Gen ATP Finals, which hosted eight of the top young players in the world in a unique format: best-of-five-set matches, but with first-to-four-game sets, no lets, a shot clock, live electronic line-calling instead of umpires, and on-court coaching. On the eve of this year’s Australian Open, Nadal, Djokovic and others competed in Tie Break Tens, an exhibition competition played in 10-point tiebreak matches with a winner’s prize of $250,000. It included a fist-pumping, courtside DJ. The friction among the governing bodies, stars, and others within the tennis world is starting to promote competition and new ideas.
Unions, scheduling, injuries, and rule changes are distinct issues, but together they combine to place tennis at a tipping point. These increasingly public discussions are coming as tennis is desperately preparing for its aging stars to move on and the ordinary players to pick up the slack. “The era of us, the players who have been around for the last 10 years has been maybe too boring for [the tennis authorities],” said perennial top 10 player Tomas Berdych. “It’s been always consistent, you see quarterfinals all the time six out of the top eight guys. If that was not enough then maybe they want some change. We not gonna be here forever. If they want to start completely, like, a different era with the young guys. Well, why not?”
At times, it seems that tennis exists solely to make a mockery of change. The 2018 Australian Open has, in many ways, doubled as an argument for how little some of the new rules were needed. Numerous top seeds — Venus Williams, Sloane Stephens, Garbiñe Muguruza, Johanna Konta, Alexander Zverev, David Goffin, and Jack Sock — were eliminated early, while three unseeded players 23 or younger (Kyle Edmund, Elise Mertens, and Hyeon Chung) have advanced to their first semifinals. “Every time some upset happens, everyone is like, ‘We’re only going to have 16 seeds!’ ‘What?’” said Madison Keys, last year’s U.S. Open finalist, rolling her eyes. “We were never asked our feelings on it. It just kinda came about so now everyone is just hearing it and as the tournament is unfolding, everyone is just like: ‘Yeah, we need more drama! That’s what we need.”
Eighth seed Caroline Garcia concurred less sarcastically: “Sixteen seeds — for sure it’s bad. It’s a huge draw. 32 seeds is OK. And people who complain about no surprise in the tournament? There is a lot of surprise, a lot of seeds are out, and [there are] some big matches.”
Many of the top male players, however, weren’t aware of the rule changes. Tomas Berdych and Juan Martin del Potro were caught off guard; Rafael Nadal, the top male player in the world and a famed traditionalist, seemed surprised by questions about seeding change. “Only 16 seeds? This is approved already?” Explanation brought muttering: “It’s an error,” he said under his breath. “It’s not very smart. Sometimes we do things … that aren’t very smart.”
He took a deep breath. “In the end, facing players who are very good in the first round, the only thing it does is that people who are very good get eliminated sooner. I am 31 years old, and 32 and a half when the rule goes into place. I don’t know what will happen, but for the younger people, the spectators, there’s a need to create stars, to create players who advance continually. In that way, there are more ways that very good players could lose early, and regardless, I think it’s a mistake.”
The 2018 Australian Open marks the first serious attempt to apply any changes to the main tour. Before this year, most of the experiments had taken place in slam-qualifying draws or newer events such as the Next Gen Finals and the Laver Cup. The lack of dialogue and the feeling that some of these decisions represent random whimsical tinkering are what continue to rankle the players. Indeed, as Keys tried to continue her thought, words proved too much for her: “It’s just, yeah, I think it’s just …” Tongue firmly in cheek, she raised both hands to the sky. “Why, why, why?”
One week before the Australian Open, players traveled to the sleepy Melbourne suburb of Kooyong for a pre-slam exhibition event held at the Grand Slam’s modest old home. As former top-10 player Andrea Petkovic pushed her match into a third set, the tournament emcee sprinted onto the court, jumped onto her bench, and began to interview the perplexed German.
“I was so thrown off, and all of a sudden there was some guy next to me,” Petkovic said afterward, laughing. “It was like ‘Hey, can we have a brief chat?’ And my first thought was to say ‘No, go away! What are you doing here? Security!’”
At the 2015 U.S. Open, thanks to a joint ESPN and USTA initiative, CoCo Vandeweghe became the first player in history to be interviewed during her match as former player Pam Shriver invaded the court for a 35-second chat; it was an indication of the direction in which television, another leading voice at the tennis table, would push the sport if it had full control.
The most significant issue for broadcasters is the length of matches that routinely interfere with planned television schedules. Ten years ago, the measure of a great point was the sight of both players bent double, frantically gasping for air, soundtracked by a loud ovation. But brevity has become the modern-day obsession of broadcasters, powered by an aging audience and the condescending belief that millennials are too simple to understand the complexities of tennis in its current form. According to a 2016 study of sports leagues, the average age of the ATP’s television audience is 61, fourth highest of all major sports. The WTA fares better; its average viewer age was 55, and the age of its audience decreased between 2006 and 2016.
But WTA CEO Steve Simon might just be the most radical figure of all, a champion of short matches, which he believes should be between 60 and 90 minutes. “The attention spans of the audience today is shrinking,” he has argued. “Everybody wants it in very short nuggets and to see somebody sit for two to three hours and watch anything anymore is getting harder and harder.”
Many players are unconvinced. “Why do we need it shorter? TV?” said Rodionova, who spoke as Simona Halep’s epic 4–6 6–4 15–13 victory over Lauren Davis unfolded on press-room televisions. “Look at this match! Everyone’s loving it; it’s 11–11 in the third, and they’ve been playing a really long time. Everyone’s glued — the whole stadium and outside on the TVs, the whole locker room is watching. I think this is what is exciting about tennis.”
The rule changes in Melbourne this year — a strictly enforced five-minute warmup, and a 25-second shot clock tested during the qualifying rounds — are part of the attempt to squeeze out as much dead time from tennis as possible. They have met mixed reviews. Some players value the increased efficiency. “I think it’s fine because I don’t like anyone taking too much time,” Pliskova said with a chuckle. But, others, as with Rodionova, were stressed out. “It just rushes you to go to play. We could be playing for four hours. There is no rush!” deadpanned Carla Suárez-Navarro.
Petkovic urged tennis to keep experimenting for the sake of fans, but as a player she expressed discomfort with how far tennis is willing to chase cheap entertainment over the pull of the game’s traditional appeal. “I’m not an exhibition player at all,” she said. “I’m ambitious and I want to win. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s for points, for money, or whatever reason. When I’m on court I want to win. And I like to see that. That’s what sports for me is about — players going out there and overcoming their fears and doubts and trying to be the best versions of themselves and wanting to win. I feel like, with the Fast4 [another exhibition with four-game sets], everybody is playing through the legs. I know it’s interesting to see the skills the guys or girls have. For me, as a fan, that’s not what I look for. I want to see the ambitious fight for the points.”
Nadal, meanwhile, was pointed in his criticism of the priorities of tennis’s governing bodies. “The soul of tennis isn’t lost. There are changes that are always necessary, and it’s good to search for things that bring more of the spectacle. What I am unclear on is whether what they are looking for is the spectacle or pure business. That’s what sometimes confuses me a bit. I believe sometimes, only the instant business is what’s sought after, and you can lose things that over the long run would be good for our sport.”
An earlier version of this piece misidentified a photo of Rafael Nadal as one of Roger Federer.