When I was looking for a media source of the events described in the “An Inconvenient Truth” post, I mentioned that a random twitter user had pointed me to the existence of an article that met my needs, which was printed in The Canberra Times in 1994. In the course of locating that article, and tracing back through the coverage of tennis in that publication throughout that year, I happened across a couple of interesting articles on tennis that were unrelated to my quest. Despite the irrelevancy, they were still fascinating enough that I printed them out with the intent to write about them at a future time. I need to clean off that corner of my desk, thus the future is now.
An article in The Canberra Times published in February 1994 outlined rule modifications which had been proposed by Tennis Australia in order to speed up tennis. Geoff Pollard, the president of Tennis Australia at the time, is quoted as describing the proposals as “fast food” tennis. Reflecting back on the mid-nineties, I do no recall fast food as being an aspirational objective. Maybe I was living in a different bubble.
Nevertheless, the objectives outlined by Pollard included a reduction in the time between points, eliminating a break at the change of ends after the first service game, and to have one point advantage, or sudden death, tie-breakers. Geoff Pollard was also an advocate of no-advantage scoring and for tie-break games to be played at 5-5. It would not shock me to learn that Geoff Pollard is a distant cousin of Jimmy Van Alen.
This further supports the theory that I had already arrived at when previously discussing the shortened format rules. If Tennis Australia was not the epicenter of the effort to introduce shortened formats into tennis, then certainly they were among the more vocal advocates.
A second article on the same topic outlined that the rule changes proposed by Tennis Australia would be considered at the next ITF annual meeting in September of 1994. The specific changes on the slate of proposals included reducing the maximum amount of time between points from 25 to 20 seconds, a three minute break at the end of each set, and allowing coaches on the court during the set break.
According to these sources, the ATP, WTA, and ITF were grappling with ways to make the sport more fan-friendly. This included shortening the length of matches to bring average competition time in line with that of other major sports. It is clear that there was a focus on making the game more appealing for televised matches.
I was struck at how the common themes of modernization are the exact same ones that tennis is still currently grappling with. In “Friend at Court 2020, It’s About Time” I wrote about how the maximum time between points had been increased from 20 to 25 seconds and my confusion, since I thought that it was already 25 seconds. It seems that at some point the change did actually occur, but has been reversed. The implementation of a “shot clock” at professional tennis to enforce the time between points rule is a recent related innovation in the game.
I was also unaware that allowing chairs for the players on the court was not a common practice until Wimbledon in 1975. Chairs were cited as one reason for increases in match length. At first I was thinking that in the absence of chairs players might be less inclined to take the full time allowed during the end changes, but in current times the umpires ask players to stay in their chairs until time is called, and this is strictly to accommodate television commercial breaks. Maybe the necessity of the commercial break hadn’t fully been sorted out yet in the mid-nineties. Or perhaps without sitting down during rest breaks, fatigue shortened matches. It is an interesting thought exercise in any case.
I was also somewhat surprised to see a proposal for on court coaching, which is a topic that is still hotly debated in the current era as a way to increase spectator interest and entertainment. In 1994 the top players at the time were the ones most opposed to on-court coaching. This is somewhat odd because those are the players that can afford coaches and a large support team and would stand to benefit the most from that aspect if implemented.
One thing is certain as I clear these two articles off my desk. The fact that I stumbled across those resources has illuminated another valuable source for understanding what was going on in the ITF historically, which is archived media coverage. Google is really good for resources that have emerged in the internet era, but not so much for anything before. My understanding of how to locate and leverage useful information related to this project is becoming more refined.
Geoff Pollard did highlight some ideas which greatly resonate with me, rehabilitating my perception of his image to a certain degree. When discussing rule changes designed to counteract dominating styles of play in the game at that time, he completely downplayed that as a consideration. Pollard was clear that it is up to the players to evolve the tactics of the game to counteract specific styles of play.
In other words, if a player is using a tactic and having great success with it, the other players need to figure out their own tactics to defeat the other player rather than looking for a rule change. Tennis is an endless cycle of evolution. That is what is so beautiful about the game.
- Quick fix plan for tennis junkies, The Canberra Times, February 3, 1994
- The search for lively tedium-free tennis, The Canberra Times, June 21, 1994.
