CRAIG CIGNARELLI SHARES HIS TENNIS OPINIONS WITH 10SBALLS “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE”

Written by: Staff on 31st January 2016

CRAIG CIGNARELLI SHARES HIS TENNIS OPINIONS WITH 10SBALLS "TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE"

epa05109354 A raquet being restrung on day one of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 18 January 2016. EPA/JULIAN SMITH AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT |

Tennis has always been about time. Players move deeper in the court to buy time to track down deep balls. They add spin, arc and change pace to give themselves more time for positioning. They hit crosscourt so the ball travels farther in space and time.

To steal time, they take the ball early, hit flatter, play down the line, and add pace to shots. Often they move forward in the court to play before the bounce, so the opponent has less time to recover and react. Some coaches suggest the game revolves around time.

In an attempt to make tennis more attractive to fans and television viewers, administrative bodies are making concerted efforts to compress the game. Some venues have replaced the third set with a ten-point tiebreaker, while others have turned to no-ad scoring. Colleges nixed the singles warm-up, played let cords, and shortened doubles sets all in the name of time. Across the globe, nations experiment with 4-game sets, 5-game sets, and World Team Tennis is now working with a 25-second shot clock. Each of these temporal changes disrupts tradition, making issues like fitness and concentration and tactics (questionably) less relevant. The changes have brought a vocal group of traditionalists out of the shadows to declare the administrative bodies are destroying the game.

But at the moment, time is of the essence. With the slower courts and unpredictable match times, tennis is a difficult spectator sport. Don’t get me wrong, I love a five-hour battle where t-shirt changes and medical time-outs occur often, and, by days end, empty Gatorade bottles litter the court. Few things bring more drama than a five-setter played under grueling conditions where the climax comes with a display of humanity’s indomitable will to win. Hell, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t alter a thing! But in an era of commercialism and instant gratification, there is no stopping the modifications.

And so, in the spirit of the mathematicians who would appreciate the Pythagorean angles and geometric arcs we see on our rectangles, here’s some basic addition and subtraction:

A 6-4 set includes 10 games. Let’s assume games average 7 points. (With deuces some will be more, but this is a hypothetical so bear with me). Thus, we have 70 points. 10 of those will come at the beginning of games so we can discount those. Therefore, 60 points will be subject to the “25 seconds between points” rule. Let’s say we cut the “between point” time to 17 seconds. Multiply that -8 seconds by 60 and you get -480 seconds, or -8 minutes.

Additionally, in the 6-4 set, there are 4 changeovers where players get 90 seconds (the first changeover is not supposed to be a break). If we modify the changeovers to 30 seconds instead of 90 seconds, we save 4 more minutes per set.

It’s simple math to figure these two changes would add up to 12 minutes per set, and, over the course of a mildly competitive 3-set match, we’d save 36 minutes.

I know, I know. The commercials, right? Yes, those changeovers account for prime time advertisement dollars and the networks would certainly lose out on revenue, but then, the complaint is that ratings are lagging and advertising is getting harder to come by. Perhaps we can add an extra minute between sets and chase those creative super-bowl type commercials that will make people want to stick around for those one-minute spots of hilarity. Truth is, I don’t have an answer for that one.

I’m also guessing the world of sports psychologists will hate this proposal, advocating that the athletes require a certain amount of time to navigate their mental rituals and prepare tactics. It is a fair argument and we have to wonder whether players can adapt to time changes with the same proficiency they’ve shown in adapting to the slower courts. When asked why he plays so fast, Roger Federer suggested he has always played that way because it allowed him to play more points when he was a kid and court time was limited (often, Federer’s games last less than one minute, and that’s due to his quick play between points and a pretty nasty service placement).

But here’s the thing. I’ve been coaching for several decades now and there are a whole bunch of kids who are missing out on some critical components of this game. Things like fitness, mental endurance, tactical adjustments, adaptability – these are the cornerstones of human development. For many, these are the reasons we want our kids in sports. I’ve seen too many kids figure things out in the third set to think we should abandon it in favor of tiebreakers, just so we can save some time.

To me, the integrity of the game’s scoring system is more important than a few advertising dollars, more important than a few mental rituals, and more important than making sure we can get through our matches quick enough for tournament directors to make it home for dinner. However, with due respect to all of those arguments, perhaps we can try another way to get at the issue. Then again, only time will tell.

Topics: 10sballs, Craig Cignarelli, Tennis News

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Vamos_feli says:

January 31, 2016 at 8:32 am

RT @10sBalls_com: -@CraigCignarelli Shares His #Tennis Opinions With @10sBalls_com “Time Is Of The Essence”
https://t.co/oAw2bmx6oC https:/…