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Leagues and Governing Bodies

Tennis Officials Seek Ways To Speed Up The Game By Altering Rules, Event Formats

Many tennis officials, instructors, club owners and TV programmers are hoping to "speed the sport up," whether that means sets are "played to four, or deuces and lets are eliminated, or tournaments are finished in a day," according to Steve Tignor of TENNIS.com. USTA Managing Dir of Adult Tennis Jeff Waters said, "We know that people don’t have unlimited hours to play. ... We need to shorten up the window for tennis." Waters noted one solution is Fast4, which was started by Tennis Australia in '14. It is an "attempt to mimic the success that cricket has had with its own shorter-format league, Twenty20." In this format, games are "no-ad, sets go to four, tiebreakers go to five (win by one) and let serves are played." Without the "ebb and flow that deuce creates, every point moves a match one step closer to the finish line." Waters said that the USTA wants to "'promote creativity' in tennis, especially in how people are introduced to it." Tiebreaker tournaments, timed matches and short-set competitions "are all encouraged." With similar goals in mind, the NCAA has recently "instituted changes designed to speed up play and reduce the time it takes to watch a dual match." No-ad scoring has "been introduced and super-tiebreakers have replaced third sets -- even the warm-up has been eliminated." Intercollegiate Tennis Association COO Erica Perkins Jasper "sees the upside of the condensed game." She said, "With no-ad, you figure out pretty quickly which players embrace pressure and which don’t. But the ones who don’t really improve with this format." To "truly change tennis players’ mindsets, though, Waters knows that college may be too late" (TENNIS.com, 9/21).

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