Fast tennis: the game’s answer to Twenty20

Tennis Australia’s new Fast4 Tennis format, used for the first time in a professional match between Federer and Hewitt this month, could be set to revolutionise the game. Paul Newman in Sydney discovers the faster game appeals to both the pros as well as those at the grass roots level of the sport

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The Australian Open has not yet begun but Roger Federer has already won his first five-set match of the year. Despite being taken the distance, the 33-year-old Swiss beat his old rival, Lleyton Hewitt, in just 92 minutes here last night. Federer won 4-3, 2-4, 3-4, 4-0, 4-2.

Confused? In years to come such a scoreline might become less of a strange sight. Federer and Hewitt played at the Qantas Credit Union Arena under a new format which could be the sport’s answer to Twenty20 cricket. Tennis Australia, the organisers of the Australian Open, which begins next week, has pioneered the development of “Fast4 Tennis” over the last three years at club and semi-professional level and believes it can help to transform the sport.

The capacity crowd of 10,000 here clearly enjoyed the format, as did the players. “It keeps the score close and the score keeps moving,” Federer said afterwards. “Every point is more important. It’s hard to get back from a break. I think it’s more likely that you would go into four or five sets. That keeps it close. I liked it overall. I think it’s a good thing.”

Craig Tiley, the CEO of Tennis Australia and tournament director of the Australian Open, believes that the sport has taken its eye off the ball in terms of adapting to the modern world and meeting the changing demands of consumers. He believes many modern-day spectators want more entertainment and more excitement. At grass-roots level he believes that players of all ages and their families want to have a better idea of when their matches will start and finish.

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“I think we’re kidding ourselves if we say that tennis participation is growing in every country,” Tiley said here last night. “The governing bodies will tell you that it is because that’s what they have to do, but it’s just not true. People are doing many more other things.

“We have to provide more entertainment, we have to be more cool, we have to get young kids in it. We know around the world that if a kid hasn’t played tennis by the age of 15 there’s an 80 per cent chance that they never will. Now we have something cool that kids can get into.”

Craig Morris, the director of participation at Tennis Australia, said: “We find in Australia that fewer and fewer people are committing to weekend competitions because of the time they are taking. Their weekends are becoming more precious. People don’t want to commit to a team-based competition that starts at 1pm and finishes after 5pm.”

He added: “From a junior perspective our competitors such as netball, basketball and soccer all have a start-and-finish time for their matches, which their parents really like. For us to attract more young people into competitions we also need to have a start-finish time. It fits within a family’s weekend.”

Over the years matches have become longer and longer because rising standards have made points increasingly hard to win. The trend towards trying to shorten matches - which has had limited success - can be traced back to the 1950s, when Jimmy Van Alen invented the “Van Alen Streamlined Scoring System”. His formula included a tie-break, which was introduced at a professional tournament at Newport, Rhode Island in 1965. Van Alen himself sat beside the court and waved a red flag to signal the start of the tie-break when a set reached 6-6.

The US Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to adopt tie-breaks in 1970. Tie-breaks are now used everywhere, though three of the four Grand Slam tournaments (the US Open is the exception) and the Davis Cup have no tie-breaks in the final set of singles matches.

Doubles matches on the men’s tour go even further. A match-tie break (the first pair to 10 points with at least a two-point margin) is used at one set-all and deciding points are played at deuce.

Some broadcasters like quicker formats because they make constructing television schedules easier. Shortening matches, nevertheless, is only part of Fast4’s attraction. The format also guarantees many more “big” points and fewer flat periods in matches.

The first-to-four-games concept is not new in itself. The Association of Tennis Professionals, which also conducted a less-than-successful experiment at Challenger level recently with the “no-let” rule, tried the format 13 years ago, when the idea was championed by Francesco Ricci Bitti, the president of the International Tennis Federation.

“It was reasonably successful, but the players didn’t support it,” Ricci Bitti said. “I am still convinced this could be a good test, playing best-of-five sets with each ending at four games not six. In my opinion, as a business-oriented man, the peak of the attention of spectators is at the end of the set. If you have more ends [of sets], it works better.”

Ricci Bitti said he still believed tennis should explore ways of making matches shorter. “We have a sport where television and the media are very important and perhaps the length of our matches could be an issue,” he said.

Tiley said: “My personal opinion is that tennis needs something else that challenges it, though we have a lot of tradition, which we will never change and will always respect. Will there be events played under this format in the future? Undoubtedly. Will major events be played using this formula? No question. Whether it’s done by us or someone else, it will happen.”

Tennis Australia has been talking to its counterparts, including the Lawn Tennis Association in Britain and the French and US federations, with a view to expanding internationally. “We’ve been talking to them in the last few weeks and there’s been a real interest in those federations because Roger was playing here,” Morris said. “They’ve been watching closely. There’s an appetite for it.”

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FAST4 FORMAT - THE RULES

First to four games

Each set is won by the first player to win four games. At 3-3 a tie-break decides the set. The tie-break is won by the first player to win five points, with no need to have won two more points than your opponent.

No-advantage scoring

At deuce the player who wins the next point wins the game. The receiver decides the service side for the concluding point.

No lets

If a serve hits the top of the net and lands in it is a legitimate serve.

No sitting down

Players cannot sit between changes of ends and must take no longer than 60 seconds between games. They are allowed a 90-second break between sets.