As we enter another summer of tennis there will be the inevitable men’s tennis versus the women’s game debates.
Millions more words will be added to the billions already out there on the three sets/five sets argument. The equal pay situation will see the righteous PC brigade battle it out with forces of chauvinism.
I’ll let the maths speak for my position here, then move on.
The maximum length of a women’s match (three sets) is 66% of a man’s five sets. The minimum length of two – as opposed to a men’s three – is therefore 60%. Split the difference to arrive at an average and you’ve got 63%.
Imagine the women at your workplace clocking of just after lunch each day and being on the same salary. Enough of that though.
Where women’s tennis does itself an enormous disservice and alienates many fans is in the one-sided nature of the early rounds.
The top seeds cruise through with 6-2 6-0 score lines. 6-1 6-4 is seen as a struggle. Entire matches last 50 minutes. Duck out for a quick swim or fire up the barbie and all you’ll see is the handshake.
Media, especially the host broadcaster, will promote these results as ‘a dominant display’, ‘she powered to victory’ and ‘she was in full flight’.
No, it was an out-and-out pizzling.
What we all love in sport is a contest. The occasional hammering of your foes can be enjoyable, but in women’s tennis rounds one to four are as gripping and thought provoking as the lions versus the Christians.
There is no doubt who will win, just by how many.
Imagine your AFL team winning by 15 goals every week. Your soccer team regularly achieving double figure victories. Yawn.
The brevity and predictability of women’s tennis is costing it fans, TV ratings and sponsorship.
My solution – take out the top eight seeds.
Place the top women in two pools, like the end of season masters format.
In pool one are seeds one, four, six and seven; say Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka, Li Na and Maria Sharapova all playing each other.
Pool two would be seeds two, three, five and eight.
Each woman would play three high quality matches. The top two in each pool qualify for the quarter finals.
Everyone else from the ninth seed down plays a normal knockout event. Women outside the seeds would be ‘shielded’ from the top annihilators until they’re in form.
The last four here join the four qualifiers from the top seeded pools in the last eight – which would be a random draw.
TV networks and viewers would have an interesting choice in the first week of a grand slam.
A guaranteed interesting contest between say Caroline Wozniacki and Sam Stosur or a five set slug-a-thon between two unknown gentlemen from central Europe? The TV coverage would quite rightly focus on the top seeds’ round robin. A 6-4 win in the third set would be far preferable to yet another 6-1 6-0 drubbing.
The cruise control nature of women’s grand slam tennis has made it stale and predictable.
A shake up of the format is needed to re-invigorate interest and give us what well want in sport-a bloody good contest.
Jabari
Guest
Maybe they should do that for Men's tennis as well. Should Bernard Tomic really play Rodger Fedderer. We know who wins end of story.
bryan
Guest
Women don't play 5 sets because their points are longer, due to lack of power to finish as easily. Racquets have changed the game so the finesse is out of it. Hingis would have huge issues now due to lack of power. The increase in power has reduced the volley because passing shots are so easy. The top serve speed is now 260km/h+ whereas when the Poop was playing, it was only 230. that's 10% increase in 10 years. that's like Bolt running a 9sec hundred. The only comparable increase was in swimming, where they blocked the super suits. standardised racquets will never work, someone like Hingis will always need a lighter racquet than Serena Williams. In terms of solutions, I think reducing the sweet spot on the racquets is necessary. service lines need to move up towards the net. People do not like 6-7 7-6 6-7 40-0 40-0 40-0 2 hit rallies. Finally, something needs to be done about Tennis being an elitist spot. Only rich white people play, with an occasional Asian or black person.
Johnno
Guest
Adam good points about the women's grand slams, some good stats. Ultimatley with haveing the best play in later rounds, that will never happen even though in theory it's a good idea why? -TV ratings $$, advertising. If the top 10 players skip the opening rounds of WTA tour events outside grandslams, less crowds, tv ratings promo of stars. Fans want to see the best. Even if thrashings, as WTA is global and in your local city or town it maybe the only time each year you wil see a Graf,Hingis,Captriait,Seles,Serena Williams,Davenport etc, even if it's a thrashing. Think hopman cup, or at Adelaide. Watching the stars like Nadal or Fed, you may only see live once. So WTA organisers feed of that. Same in sport one day cricket haveing endless matches, you don't play 7 straight in the 1 city, you spin it all over the country, same with WTA, endless events, and stars in every round. 2)Also match fitness and endorsements, the stars need to play matches to get match fit, don't want to be underdone by later rounds, and more exposure equals more endorsements. More is more, not less is more. Makeing the serve line closer may make the serves faster, not slower. Scrapping let calls, would be good maybe, but then it would be a cruel way to lose via a let serve. But over the match it would even out. Maybe scrap double faults, only get one serve that's it like table tennis. That would reduce the speed on serves, and greater emphsis on accuracy and spin, than power.
Adam Julian
Roar Guru
From November 3, 1973 to August 17, 1987, Tracy Austin (For 22 weeks) was the only player apart from Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova to be ranked the world’s best player. From 1973-1987, Navratilova and Evert won 35 out of a possible 60 Grand Slams. Since 2000, 17 different players have won Grand Slam titles, including six since 2010. The game is more competitive today, but is it more aesthetically pleasing? I agree the Masters format for the top seeds could be introduced into other tournaments, perhaps not Grand Slams, but some of the other WTA events to make them more interesting. Additionally John McEnroe came up with some excellent suggestions for improving tennis in his biography, all of which I agree with. Among other things, he said that: Wooden Racquets should return to prevent repeated baseline slogs The service line should be moved closer to the net to prevent the serve dominating (More of a problem in the men’s game) Let chord calls should be abolished as it would speed up the game. Tennis should have a specific season, rather than running all year round. Grunting should be penalised in some way to.
O Golfan
Roar Rookie
Matt, what a fantastic suggestion! If they played Grand Slams in this fashion, the top women's tennis players would really been earning their keep. The three sets/five sets argument, as you describe it, is bizarre. Tennis Tragics can await a more exciting 2015 WTA season under these changes.
FrozenNorth
Guest
US Open last year, QF 6-0 6-0 and semi 6-0 6-3. Appalling, they are the worst pro athletes in the world right now.
FrozenNorth
Guest
You're kidding?? Depth? Blowouts? There were 6-0 6-2 scorelines in major semis last year. I dunno what you're watching but it's not womens tennis.
Johnno
Guest
-I'd say women's tennis has never had more depth. The gap between the top 10 and then the next top 50 has got closer. And as a whole the top 100. I remember in the 80's and 90's, often the round of 16 would be a wipe out with the top 5 players clean sweeping often 6-0 6-1. Event the gap between the top 5 and then the rank 6-10 could be big. Graf/Seles all the time, then Hingis/Capriati/Dabenport/williams it got boring, now there is more depth in the top 100 than ever before in women's tennis. And the racquet technology has helped closed the gap between the top 10 and the rest, plus better coaching, strength and conditioning. And as for the oh all eastern europe thing, what nonsense. China women's tennis is booming, India too, and eastern europe covers many countries. And if one knocks that, well hello role reversal. People from those countries could say women's tennis was boring, heavily dominated by the US, and sometimes aussy, occasional German and a few Czechs. Now tennis has gone more global, as eastern europe covers many countries, eastern europe is not a country, and Asia, Japan,China,india. A few yanks/aussies here upset that the women's tennis monopoly has been broken, a bit like rugby with the home unions (England/Scotland/Wales/Ireland) annoyed at rugby's expansion,and there monopoly over.
FrozenNorth
Guest
I call BS on the racquets. The problem is the homogenisation of the game via slower hard courts, much slower and bouncier grass courts and slightly faster clay courts. The players, particularly the women, just focus on groundies and hit the tour asap, that's the problem, they are EXTREMELY poorly coached. It's tough to serve and volley these days but dear oh me, so many players BACK PEDDLE to the baseline if in a dominant position in front of the service line, it's like the net has funnel webs all over it. We're seeing the men starting to recognise this with Federer hiring Edberg and ND hiring Becker. No they will not suddenly serve and volley but both MUST learn to kill the point when they have Rafa scampering in his back hand corner and forced to use one hand, don't let him just loop it back and re-set the point. Also, someone above said women move OK? You gotta be kidding, they are incredibly unfit for what they do, their movement as a whole is terrible. Oh and Sharapova, she's 6ft tall and has the most appalling serve imaginable, just awful.
Dan
Guest
Agreed re: racquets, they have evolved much faster than the sport itself. Watch any WTA match and you'll see shanks, slaps and lasoos sprinkled amongst some good stuff here and there. The forgiving and powerful racquets make proper & consistent technique redundant, and the player then suffers from lacking the need to be more precise and strong with the ball and you end up with players like Stosur the other night going for 44 unforced errors in 2 sets of tennis. This is relatively unheard of in ATP - and Stosur was a grand slam winner! There are some genuinely great womens tennis players to watch IMHO. Two of the sports biggest draw cards are too annoying to make it entertaining (Sharapova and Azarenka). Yes, they should be allowed to win at all costs by all means allowable. But why watch slap happy, squealing top flight women's players mow through intimidated & weaker opponents for 80% of major tournaments? The improved equipment is meant to assist and improve younger, weaker players but what it does is just increase the difference in standard between them and the best players who are able to better master the equipment. On a different but related point, the increased grand slam prize money was partly designed to better reward the lower ranked participants and assist in their financial burdens in competing around the calendar. Nowadays they seem less likely to progress in a tournament, and the higher ranked players absorb all the financial gains designed to improve their opponents. Standardise the equipment, make it a true test of athleticism and skill on an equal playing field. The design of the tournament is fine, no need to mess with the traditions and history of the game.
Chop
Roar Guru
The one dimensional women's (and mens IMHO) are a results of the racquets taking most of the touch out of the game. The racquets enable players to be one dimensional because if they can move reasonably well and smash the ball, players can make a fantastic living on the tour without threatening the top 8 (or so). I don't think it will be too long before we start to see the dynamic switch back to tennis players rather than baseline power drones. Until that happens though tennis will continue to be fairly boring sadly.
FrozenNorth
Guest
It's not as simple as you make out. Firstly, tournament directors and TV types don't want the hassle of 5 set matches as it makes life difficult for them. Secondly, the field is so incredibly weak that instead of two set pummelings you'll just get three set pummelings. Your idea for changing the format is a bit daft and tries to paper over the issues. Women's tennis is at an all time low, the majority of the field is comprised of slavic or russian born players with the mental fortitude of a frightened turtle. They are hopelessly weak between the ears and disgracefully one dimensional in their play. They all seemingly look and play the same with zero court awareness, they are basically ball machine hitters not true tennis players. Until this is addressed no amount of tinkering will get it right.