The Sports-India Community

For any continuum, where to draw the line is an issue. Why stop at 5? 7 sets? 6 sets with a super-tiebreak? 4? ... Change the point system? What is the optimal? With respect to spectator entertainment? With respect to figuring out who has the best skills? Most stamina?

Formats are shortened in this era of instant gratification. How else will one have time to check Twitter and Pinterest?

Is T5 cricket here yet?

The last decade has seen some of the best matches in the history of the sport so I think the present system works for the slams. Even within the slams you have the variation with some not playing a breaker in the 5th whereas others do.

S_K_S wrote: ↑Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:47 am Billie Jean King says men should not play five sets at Grand Slams - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/43337914

I try not to get angry at news these days, because there is plenty to get angry about, but I did read the above piece and get really annoyed. In terms of stupid suggestions this is right up there with the worst ones. Nothing against the work that she does for the equality movement and improving women's tennis but to reduce the slams to best of 3 would be to deny future tennis fans the classic matches that we have experienced over the past decades. As it is now, we don't have 5 sets outside of the slams so I don't see what the problem is. Players are getting injured because of the number of tournaments they play, not because of an extra 2 sets in a slam. Personally, I think the 1000 finals should be best of 5 but that will never happen. The bottom line is that the men's game is a superior product to the women's so all this would do would be to bring the men's game down to their level.

I haven't read the article yet, but just the headline alone wants me to do a Mcnore and say, "You cannot be serious"!. It is ridiculous she suggested that. I totally agree with Sam that all the injuries are by-products of a longer tour. Most of the classic matches (which at times involved unheralded players) were because of the 5-set format. There may be better ways (as Prasen put it), but someone has to do serious analysis of the data available and do some POCs to sell those ideas. However, I would leave grandslams the way they are.

- Varma

I think there may be a point to playing shorter matches and perhaps even shorter sets. Millennials in the Western world don't have the attention span for the longer events, so it may make sense if some research is done. Otherwise, the tennis demographic at least in the US skews towards those that aren't getting any younger

Yes, Tennis is very hard on the body, much more than any other contemporary sport i know. Except boxing and wrestling.

And Tennis is but a blip on the radar of a kid currently growing up in the U.S. Definitely an old man's sport. Too many things competing for one's attention these days.

The NFL, Track & Field (athletics) in the US are also losing eyeballs. Maybe people are too engrossed in social media as one of the previous posts states?

Reducing the Majors to 3 sets takes away from the drama. The hard courts seem to have been slowed down, to make for numbing ground strokes and fear of going to the net. I say, speed up the hard courts and allow for a fearless volleyer to shorten the points. Even Wimbledon is a ground stroker's paradise. It is those damn big racquet heads, allowing for the maddening top spin, which terrorizes volleyers. Make the racquet heads smaller and speed up the courts for shorter points. Ban the new strings that allow for extreme top spin. Need equipment standards. Nadal and Novak play for 6 hours and cannot stand up at the end of a major final. They are going to be in rehab for ever.

punarayan wrote: ↑Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:10 pm Nadal and Novak play for 6 hours and cannot stand up at the end of a major final. They are going to be in rehab for ever.

I hated that particular Australian Open final as it was being played. These two amazing players were retrieving balls that were sure winners years before the game was deliberately slowed down. I thought that it was the end of Roger Federer and players like him -- clearly I was so very wrong.

punarayan wrote: ↑Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:10 pm Reducing the Majors to 3 sets takes away from the drama. The hard courts seem to have been slowed down, to make for numbing ground strokes and fear of going to the net. I say, speed up the hard courts and allow for a fearless volleyer to shorten the points. Even Wimbledon is a ground stroker's paradise. It is those damn big racquet heads, allowing for the maddening top spin, which terrorizes volleyers. Make the racquet heads smaller and speed up the courts for shorter points. Ban the new strings that allow for extreme top spin. Need equipment standards. Nadal and Novak play for 6 hours and cannot stand up at the end of a major final. They are going to be in rehab for ever.

I am fine with equipment standards. But, the hard courts actually turn out making the playing field more even. And, even within hard courts, we have the fast hard court in the Australian and the medium speed hard court in the USO. If you make the courts too slow or too fast, it becomes very one-sided. Just look at the number of wins at the Wimbledon and FO by Federer and Nadal respectively. So, making the USO another Wimbledon is perhaps not the solution. Speed it up a bit and experiment, perhaps.

The problem with speeding up courts is that then you pretty much need an ultra-fast strong and basically the strongest players win. I would love a way for a court to favor the volleyers but not the brutes who serve fast. However, it seems hard to decouple. I did some analysis of the quarterfinals in the Wimbledon the last few years and unless you have a "top-10" serve, you are not in. Wimbledon quarter-finalists seem easier to predict than USO.

I don't know what the general viewing public will like, but just going by the non-scientific applause score, it seems that longer rallies get more of an applause than a flat-out ace. I like watching rallies more than I like the ball being bashed into an ace with no chance of a return although there is a certain beauty in some aces, e.g., the ones placed with pin-point accuracy or spin.

I do not know how to decouple the serving from the volleying. Perhaps we take away players having two serves. Make it one serve. Then, speed up the court and perhaps then the volleyers without having brutish serves will be in play. But that may be too radical a change for tennis.

Of course, I understand other people have other preferences. This is just mine.

Couple of big challengers announced in the UK which should hopefully interest some Indian players

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/43382976

The first one of those challengers appears in the week when there are 3 ATP 250 tournaments in Europe on clay while the second one is the week before French open - i,e in the week of French open qualifying. So, the fields at both the events is likely to be weak compared to usual European challengers. But, usually not too many of our players , go and play in UK except when it close to Wimbledon qualies.

Not the best of scheduling in that case especially for the 2nd tournament.

Ken Flach part of a trend setting pairing along with Robert Seguso who set the present day standards of players playing only Doubles as a career , is no more. RIP Ken Flach
http://www.itftennis.com/news/282031.aspx

A great double pairing. One of the names you can't say without saying the other person in the pairing. Flach-Seguso, Woodbridge-Woodforde, Mcenroe-Fleming, Newcombe-Roache, McNamara-McNamee, Leach-Pugh, Bhupathi-Paes, Bjorkman-Woodbridge, Black-Ullyet and Llodra-Santoro are a few that spring to mind.