Should Tiebreakers Replace Deciding Sets?

Paul Fein

The Rationale for Reform

On Jan. 16-17, 2001, ATP Tour officers and staff, tournament directors and players representatives met in Melbourne to discuss the future of doubles. Since nearly all of tennis’ marquee men’s players [viz. singles stars] have abandoned doubles and mixed doubles, the ATP decided it would reciprocate.

The bottom-line-minded ATP concluded that low-profile doubles standouts (Jonas Bjorkman, Don Johnson, Woodbridge, Jared Palmer and David Rikl top the doubles rankings) generate little interest and ticket, sponsor and TV revenue, and thus they didn’t justify all the prize money, accommodation expenses and court time they were receiving. Henceforth, despite the protests of numerous players, the ATP abolished tour qualifying events for doubles.

The amputation of doubles court time particularly baffles Woodbridge. “The problem we’re facing is that tournament directors want less matches on the courts. I thought the more matches you have on court the better for people to watch,” maintains Woodbridge. “Keeping the qualies and playing three full sets are vital for another reason: the development of players’ games. If young players can play doubles early in their careers on the ATP Tour, they develop into much-better, well-rounded singles players, too. You need doubles. That’s why every player in Australia has always played doubles.”

Far more important than merely reducing expenses and perhaps inducing a few wavering singles players to enter doubles events, the real rationale for reform was resuscitating doubles by making it more fan-friendly, according to McNamee.

“The problem is, in some of the doubles finals, including our own, the stadium is a third full, less than a third full,” says McNamee. “What are you going to do about that?”

The McNamee solution is the “best-of-two-sets” format which he’d like to establish at all levels of the game. “We feel that format has a lot of benefits for tournaments and for the future. And that goes all the way from Grand Slam to grass-roots tennis,” says McNamee. “So we were very keen to introduce it in the
[Australian Open] mixed doubles event.

“From the tournament perspective, we could schedule better ... we could value out for the spectators and get more matches on Centre Court,” says McNamee. “There are three matches in the day, and then the evening session starts at 7 o’clock. Sometimes the day session would end at 4:15. Instead of just saying to everybody, ‘See you later, folks, tonight’s session starts at 7 o’clock,’ we would bring in a mixed doubles match that was originally scheduled on an outside court and put it on Centre Court, so the public would get an extra match. And then the evening session would still start on time.

“If you put a [traditional] three-set match on, there’s no guarantee the evening session would still start on time,” explains McNamee. “We’ve been caught with this [problem] before. It gives you enormous flexibility in scheduling, which three-set matches don’t give you because you don’t know how long they’re going to last. The great advantage of best-of-two sets is it, effectively, can go only two hours maximum.”

That claim doesn’t ring true, though. A couple of 7-5 or 7-6 sets, especially with a lot of long games, plus a 12-10 or 16-14 tiebreaker, could easily take two-and-a-half hours, perhaps even longer. Also, couldn’t the afternoon session start a bit earlier to accommodate four Centre Court matches more often?

As it turned out, only eight of the 31 mixed doubles matches at the 2001 Australian went three sets and used “best-of-two sets” scoring. And only two of those during the Oz Open fortnight became the Centre Court scheduling panacea McNamee fervently touts.

Those facts don’t seem to dissuade or deter the bigwigs at Tennis Australia one iota. “It’s basically got unanimous support within Tennis Australia,” crows McNamee. “It was a recommendation from the Brand Tennis Committee, which has all the directors of the divisions in Tennis Australia represented. We all should be trying to improve tennis, the brand, because we’ve got to compete with other brands out there, which are other sports, other franchises, other forms of entertainment.”

“The ‘best-of-two’ actually has a lot of momentum,” continues McNamee. “It’s being introduced throughout the country. It’s being used in national junior doubles competitions and in league competitions in Victoria and Western Australia.” (In the U.S. this format has also steadily spread in the amateur game; and college tennis has relegated doubles matches to disgracefully mutilated 8-game “pro sets.”)

Geoff Pollard, the president of Tennis Australia, unequivocally supports the scoring reform. “Tennis is probably the only sport where the approximate length of the match is unknown, and the huge variation has many repercussions in scheduling and other factors for the players involved, spectators and TV,” Pollard asserts. “The ‘best-of-two’ is the only scoring method which effectively tackles the length of a tennis match.”
The power of television can never be underrated. “They [TV sports producers] love it,” assures McNamee. “The Seven Network does the Australian Open. The advantages are obvious for television.”

What’s also obvious is that what’s best for television -- or what television thinks is best -- isn’t always what’s best for tennis, either in the short or long run. As noted Australian tennis writer Suzi Petkovski puts it, “Since when is TV a barometer of good taste or ethics?”

Woodbridge warns: “If television producers see this scoring change for mixed doubles and doubles creates a two-hour time frame similar to a basketball game, then it’s eventually going to be the same [format] for singles. And then you’re not going to have the true champions of the game. You’re going to have a lot of good players winning matches and tournaments who wouldn’t be winning [as often] if you had the proper system.”

The Entertainment Quotient

Petkovski perceptively points out: “The tiebreaker-as-third set is like a punchline without the joke. Tiebreakers are dramatic when preceded by a tense, hard-fought set, not on their own.”

“I disagree with that because a super tiebreaker is preceded by two hard-fought sets,” says McNamee. “It’s arbitrary where you draw the line in the sand.”

But sometimes both preceding sets aren’t close and tense, and other times the second set isn’t close. In those cases there’s no immediate suspense that a tiebreaker-as-third set would climax.

At the other extreme of the suspense spectrum would be the confusing and anti-climactic spectacle of two tiebreakers in a row -- a traditional tiebreaker to end the second set immediately followed by a super tiebreaker to end the match. Just as tennis loses credibility when defective and ill-conceived best-14 and best-17 ranking systems result in undeserving players (most recently Martina Hingis) ranking No. 1, flawed scoring systems self-destruct by such absurd and confusing anomalies.

Woodbridge got plenty of feedback after the 2001 U.S. Open when he did a charity event at his hometown club in Sydney. He recalls: “A lot of club members watched the mixed doubles final and said to me: ‘What’s this? I hated it. You’re playing, and all of a sudden you’re finished. I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t follow it. Why do you guys need to play that format?’ At least 20 people told me they didn’t like it. We need that feedback from the tennis fan.

“At the U.S. Open I felt it wasn’t well-accepted by the people watching either,” says Woodbridge. “Some fans I talked to there felt like they were ripped off.”

On the contrary, contends McNamee, who cites “best-of-two” trials in the doubles finals of ATP Tour events this year in Bucharest and Tashkent (which, it’s fair to note, are hardly the most established and knowledgeable tennis venues). “Both teams were informed during the whole process, there were no expressed concerns ... and both finals were successful and entertaining,” according to a report issued by Richard Ings, ATP Executive Vice President Rules and Competition.

Gerry Armstrong, an ATP Officiating Supervisor at Tashkent, gave an even more upbeat assessment. “... We allowed two hours for the match and prize giving which proved to be spot on, which was very important with the imminent arrival of the president and the consequential security issues. The tiebreaker went to 13-11. It was full of very tense and exciting tennis, definitely the highlight of the match. It was clearly enjoyed by the large crowd, and I’m sure, the players. Even the losers said it was fun. Why not play the entire [doubles] draw in this way?”

McNamee denies reports in Australian and British newspapers that he advocated extending the “best of two” scoring reform to men’s and women’s doubles at the 2002 Australian Open. “You’ve got to try it at tour events before you would institute it at a Grand Slam. It has to be accepted on the tour level first,” explains McNamee.

“If it is greatly enhancing and promoting doubles, then there’s no reason it can’t be used at every level, including the Grand Slams. Philosophically, yes, I am in favor of it,” admits McNamee.

Whether better fields would also enhance and promote doubles is another question. Advocates of the super tiebreaker in the mixed doubles at the U.S. Open hoped the time-saving format would attract leading singles players. As it turned out, No. 34 Wayne Ferreira was the highest-ranked men’s singles player in the mixed, and Jennifer Capriati, no threat to go far with her brother Steven, was the only women’s top-10 player to enter.

“The time issue is a red herring,” says Petkovski. “If we regularly had the likes of Serena and Venus Williams, Anna Kournikova, Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick in mixed finals, would officials be so keen to shorten matches? More likely, fans would feel ripped off at not seeing a full, three-set extravanganza.” Wouldn’t more fans also fill the seats if big-name players competed in doubles?

“No. No. I can tell you right now [that] promoting doubles matches with marquee singles players is not going to get bums on seats,” insists McNamee. “Putting it in a time frame that’s friendly to what the spectators’ viewing habits are makes far more difference than who’s actually playing the match. People buy tickets to watch the marquee players play singles. They’re not going to buy tickets to go watch them play doubles.”
But wouldn’t it make a difference if Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Pat Rafter played doubles and mixed doubles?

“No, I don’t think it would,” maintains McNamee.

McNamee, whose four major titles came in doubles and mixed doubles, says, “I love doubles, and I hate to see what’s happened to it. There have been mixed doubles finals on the tour and in the Grand Slams where there have been less than 1,000 people watching the match. That is not acceptable. But this trial is not going
to rise or fall on what happens in the mixed doubles. What happens with the trials at men’s doubles events is going to be the key to this.”

That prospect is just what Woodbridge and many in the tennis world dread. To supposedly save doubles, we would have to destroy the scoring system.

“Doubles is the scapegoat for the problems in tennis,” concludes Woodbridge. “A few people see that as the area to attack to look like they’re doing something about the game. But you have to start with the singles game if you want to improve television rights and everything else that goes with improving a profile in sponsors’ markets. To change the whole scoring of our game for no particular reason is a funny way of thinking about the problem.”

Woodbridge is right in stressing that the focus should be shifted to how tennis is faring in those sponsors’ markets.

Last year Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal surveyed what sponsors said about sports governing bodies and concluded: “The ATP has not ingratiated itself with the U.S. sponsor community. It did not achieve a 40 percent rating in a single category and came in at 15 percent or below in two key measures -- how well it markets itself and the value it offers for the money.

“The ratings were no better on the women’s side of the court. Again, there was not one score above 40 percent affirmative in any of the 20 categories, and the WTA came in below 20 percent in some of the most important ones. Areas in which sponsors say the WTA is in dire need of improvement include how well it
markets the sport, the value it offers for the money and its responsiveness to customers.”

A Sensible Solution

Tennis leaders can both shorten total court time in doubles and increase the ratio of action time to total court time by cutting change-over time in half from 90 seconds to 45 seconds. Doubles players clearly don’t need 90 seconds of rest, and spectators don’t want to see them lingering on chairs after only two non-gruelling games.

Tennis fans crave action. What annoys them most is the excessive dead time between points, games and sets. In some men’s singles matches, particularly on faster surfaces, action time -- when the ball is in play -- amounts to less than 10 percent of the total match time! Compare that to more action-intensive sports such as basketball, soccer, ice hockey and football, where action time is a far more- entertaining 35 to 50 percent of the total game time.

If there are 12 changeovers in the average best two-of-three-sets doubles match, 45-second changeovers would save 9 minutes. In protracted three-set doubles matches that reformers are complaining about, this solution would save about 15 minutes. That’s substantial and should go a long way toward satisfying those who seek to amputate deciding sets with tiebreakers.

All things considered, if you believe the traditional scoring system of tennis is integral to its success, or even more important, one of its crowning glories, then this battle is for the integrity and perhaps even the survival of tennis.

Where do you stand?