First 4 tennis
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 9:28 amSo next week will see the debut of fast 4 tennis, which is basically the T20 equivalent of tennis.
http://www.tennis.com.au/news/2014/11/2 ... for-sydney
The main rule changes are first to 4 games wins, tiebreak at 3 all, advantage deuce, no lets.
It is an interesting concept and may help to bring in casual fans that get bored watching 4 hours of tennis.
Personally I don't think it will work in the way T20 has for cricket. Part of the allure of T20 is because of the shortened time at the crease players can go harder which ramps the entertainment level up. In tennis I'm not really sure that translates. You kinda have to go flat out the whole time. I mean sure sometimes you might conserve energy when two breaks down in a set to get ready for the next one, but that is a fair bit different to being able to slog every ball.
A good game of tennis is sport in its purest form. The perfect combination of skill, fitness, mind games, momentum, etc. moving to a shorter format loses a lot of that. You lose a lot of that in cricket too, but that is massively offset by hitting huge sixes.
http://www.tennis.com.au/news/2014/11/2 ... for-sydney
The main rule changes are first to 4 games wins, tiebreak at 3 all, advantage deuce, no lets.
It is an interesting concept and may help to bring in casual fans that get bored watching 4 hours of tennis.
Personally I don't think it will work in the way T20 has for cricket. Part of the allure of T20 is because of the shortened time at the crease players can go harder which ramps the entertainment level up. In tennis I'm not really sure that translates. You kinda have to go flat out the whole time. I mean sure sometimes you might conserve energy when two breaks down in a set to get ready for the next one, but that is a fair bit different to being able to slog every ball.
A good game of tennis is sport in its purest form. The perfect combination of skill, fitness, mind games, momentum, etc. moving to a shorter format loses a lot of that. You lose a lot of that in cricket too, but that is massively offset by hitting huge sixes.