Should there be a new format in tennis to increase its popularity among the fans? Well, this has been a long debate for quite a while. In a generation where the viewers have comparatively shorter attention spans, longer formats may seem boring to them. So, in order to level up the excitement among the masses for the racket sport, Roger Federer‘s former coach came up with a suggestion.

The 44-year-old Croatian, Ivan Ljubicic has been a former player himself. Apart from being a former player, he is renowned for his coaching stint with some of the top players in tennis. Ljubicic helped Roger Federer to add three Grand Slam titles during his tenure. Recently he used chess and cricket as examples to suggest introducing new formats in tennis. Let’s find out what he said.

The former coach of Roger Federer has suggestion to make tennis more popular

Ideas such as parting ways with the deuce-advantage system, replacing the decider sets with tiebreakers or playing best of three sets instead of five have been on the table for quite some time. Several experts have often highlighted the need for a more shorter and dynamic format in tennis. Here’s what Roger Federer’s former coach spoke about the state of the modern game in the ATP Tennis Radio Podcast.

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Ljubicic is a huge fan of chess and he’s quite surprised to see its popularity over the last few years. He noted a few changes that were brought into the sports recently and suggested that it’s time for tennis to make some changes too. He said, “What we can learn from chess is that chess introduced faster speed, moves, right, so you can play blades, three, five minutes, you can play rapid games, which is 15-30 minutes, and then you have a classic ones. And why this is interesting to me is that this is what I believe in.”

He continued, “I think the people who are coming from the world where cricket is played, will tell me the same thing is that you can introduce the faster playing formats without damaging the classic ones. And I think this is something that tennis will need to look into, is to add interesting formats to the crowd without really damaging or getting rid of the classic ones.” 

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Even in cricket there used to be only the 5-day Test matches format. Then came the one-day events and now the T20s and T10s. Sports is revolutionising in its way be it formats or investments. We’re witnessing the impacts of these changes in global sports and how important it is to adjust to the demands of the next generation. Did tennis see any new format recently?

Introduction of the Fast4 Tennis 

Tennis is quite a unique sport that has no specific number of sets or any specific time to end. So matches often extends to several hours until a player wins it by two in a game, in a set (except for tiebreakers). While, most of the events in tennis follow the traditional format. But recently, we have seen the introduction of Fast4 Tennis by Tennis Australia.

Fast4 Tennis is a format of tennis which leads to shorter matches. It uses some varied rules as compared to the traditional ones. It was first introduced in the year 2015. Several superstars of the game participated in the exhibition matches held all over Australia. We’ve seen it being implemented in the Hopman Cup and ATP Next Gen Finals. However, the Next Gen event didn’t use the no-let serve in 2018.

There have been several criticisms over the changes in the UK. But the Next Gen Finals committee believe the changes will boost the crucial moments and create quicker entertainment in the events. It will be interesting to see what changes are incorporated in tennis in the upcoming days. What are your thoughts on this? Share with us in the comment box.

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