New Australian Open CEO wants to make major change to tennis which he knows some fans won’t like
With the US Open currently underway, we are witnessing Craig Tiley’s first event as the newest CEO of the USTA.
Thus far, it has been an enthralling event, with the actual tournament preceded by a fun-filled seven days beforehand that effectively turns it into a three-week festival of tennis.
Having previously enjoyed a hugely successful spell with Tennis Australia, helping to build the Australian Open into a commercially viable enterprise that can compete with the other three majors, his latest task involves further development, but arguably on the biggest scale that the sport has to offer.
Meanwhile, it left those at Tennis Australia with a vacancy to fill, which Andrew Abdo eventually did.
However, his latest comments might not have handed him the best introduction to the mainstream tennis world, sharing his wholesale plans for change when speaking to the Herald Sun.
New Australian Open chief has bold plans for the future of tennis
There have been plenty of debates lately about rule changes to the sport, with John McEnroe keen on altering the scoring system to benefit a generation with much ‘shorter attention spans’.
However, what Abdo is suggesting would dramatically alter the entire sport as we know it, and toss out decades of tradition that surrounds the best-of-five-set format.
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He argued: “Maybe in the future, slams at the different rounds or at different lengths of duration, you know, maybe we’re not playing best of 5 all the way through, maybe the point scoring system changes.
“Maybe there are different permutations to how we engage and entertain audiences without losing the fabric, and what really makes the sport special.
“I think those are the questions that we need to explore and discover, and I think there’s a place for evolving that.
“If you listen to the purists, they’ll say, ‘don’t touch that’.”
This is a hugely divisive opinion, and perhaps the fact that he is well aware of potential backlash should prove to be a useful indication about how widely well received this might be.
Nick Kyrgios has never been a big fan of best-of-five matches
Whilst the majority of the debate has been about whether women should follow the men and start playing best-of-five matches, Nick Kyrgios has instead often advocated for the opposite to be enacted.
After all, as recently as last year, he argued: “My idea to make everyone happy would be the first week of Grand Slams should be best-of-three sets and then from the quarter-finals onwards, it should be best-of-five sets.
“It would solve a lot of issues early on; it would see a lot of different players making their way through to the quarter-finals.
Do you think women should play best-of-five set matches?
“These bigger players, once they lose the first set in some of these earlier matches, they’re already under the pump. They know that they don’t have that wiggle room to make their way back into the match.”
Amanda Anisimova recently said whether she’d like to see women play best-of-five matches, exclusively to Tennishead. This is not a debate that seems likely to go away anytime soon.
