{"id":122422,"date":"2024-09-02T14:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/02\/tennis-makes-big-bets-on-its-future\/"},"modified":"2024-09-02T14:00:31","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T14:00:31","slug":"tennis-makes-big-bets-on-its-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/02\/tennis-makes-big-bets-on-its-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis makes big bets on its future"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n<\/span>\u2019d<\/span>I\u2019d<\/span> been promised the future of tennis was in the desert.<\/p>\n

From the stands of the Next Gen ATP Finals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I watched as the eighth seed, Abdullah Shelbayh, was given the most dramatic of entrances. Inside one of the stadiums in King Abdullah Sports City, which features a sprawl of soccer fields and indoor arenas across nearly 4 million square meters, an announcer summoned a brief list of the player\u2019s accomplishments, first in Arabic and then in English. The music swelled. Bright white lasers illuminated the lines of the court before the screen at the other end of the stadium opened up to reveal a player tunnel, from which Shelbayh emerged, looking awkward and confused as spotlights swirled around him and the volume of the music rose once again. It was the most impressive light show I\u2019d ever seen at a tennis event, far surpassing anything I\u2019d witnessed at the sport\u2019s biggest tournament, the US Open \u2014 a lot of pomp for a guy ranked 185th in the world, playing in an arena that was nearly empty. In a stadium that could seat 3,700, I counted fewer than 50 spectators in total, including the players\u2019 teams and tournament workers.<\/p>\n

Later, a spokesperson with the Association of Tennis Professionals (or the ATP, the men\u2019s side of the tour) would tell me they were thrilled with how the tournament was going \u2014 the light show, so cool, right?<\/em> I asked if the turnout was disappointing, and while they agreed that it was, it was also expected. Traveling to Jeddah was a tough ask for many fans, and tennis does have a lot of history in Saudi Arabia. That interest would, hopefully, grow with time.<\/p>\n

Months earlier, the Kingdom\u2019s Public Investment Fund had struck a deal with the ATP to host Next Gen in Jeddah for the following four years. Next Gen is touted as a proving ground of sorts. There is the competition itself, which features the top-ranked men under 21. In the past decade, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have both won this tournament, later going on to win Grand Slams.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a trial for the sport itself. Next Gen is where the ATP tries out new things: \u201cinnovations,\u201d it touts, as it tests everything from dramatic rule changes to wearable tech that captures players\u2019 biometrics. And this year, a lot of lasers, apparently.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Between matches, I wandered around the grounds. From the outside, you\u2019d never guess there was a live sporting event happening. The parking lot was nearly empty. There appeared to be more people working the event than attending, many just idling around, looking at their phones. Out of boredom, I bought a candy bar from a concession stand, and the cashier told me I was the first customer they\u2019d had all day.<\/p>\n

Next Gen is a hard-court event \u2014 the most common surface \u2014 though it is unusual for several reasons. Since there are no doubles matches, the court is stripped of the lines that would frame the doubles alley, giving the area of play a narrower dimension that is destabilizing for any spectator used to looking at a normal court. The scoreboard, too, was laid out differently. Rather than the traditional scoreline, the interface prescribed more hierarchical logic to each game; the love, 15, 30, 40 order of scoring was now more legible. It was confusing to those familiar with tennis, but I could see how it might be more intuitive to someone who wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Matches had a different rhythm, too. Games were first to four points, skipping the usual win-two-points-in-a-row drama at deuce. Sets were won in four instead of six games, with tiebreaks at 3-3. Time between serves was reduced. There were no on-court warm-ups at all.<\/p>\n

Many of these changes were intended to speed up the match. Later that week in the finals match, Serbian Hamad Medjedovic would be allowed to take two 10-minute breaks between sets. His opponent and the tournament\u2019s top seed, Frenchman Arthur Fils, would not be thrilled about it. \u201cThe rule is terrible,\u201d Fils told French newspaper L\u2019\u00c9quipe <\/em>afterward<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s really stupid that this could happen here.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the event, I talked to the ATP\u2019s chief sporting officer, Ross Hutchins, who explained that the rule changes at Next Gen were part of an initiative from the top of the organization to challenge all the sport\u2019s assumptions, to reimagine each of tennis\u2019s traditions to see how to break the rules \u201cfor the benefit of the fan to enjoy our sport.\u201d Hutchins is a former player, once ranked 26th in the world in doubles, and I was surprised by how much time he spent talking about fan engagement.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Tennis is often referred to as a game of inches. Hawk-Eye turned it into a game of millimeters \u2014 three millimeters, to be exact.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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He was existentially concerned about TikTok. For the better part of the last century, sports have been a monoculture because they have always been broadcast on TV \u2014 the industry term for this is \u201clinear.\u201d Now, people look at their phones. Surveys have shown that Zoomers don\u2019t watch TV and, more shockingly, do not watch sports, at least not the way that their parents or older siblings do.<\/p>\n

Hearing Hutchins\u2019 ideas for Next Gen revealed the ATP\u2019s anxieties. The light show had been made to look good for \u201cshort-form highlights.\u201d (I.e., should the game be tailored to TikTok?<\/em>) He even proposed going as far as completely rewriting the scoring system of tennis. \u201cDo we simplify and go first to 21 points?\u201d (I.e., is the sport too confusing?<\/em>) And the new rules of Next Gen made matches quicker. \u201cIf you take the total amount of time in a match of two hours, how much, actually, is watching action versus watching someone look at their strings or changing their shirt or toweling themselves down? And can we try and reduce the dead time in a match?\u201d (I.e.,<\/em> is tennis boring?<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Some of what Hutchins was putting forward was merely to illustrate just how far they were willing to go. He suspected some of the more radical ideas out of Next Gen wouldn\u2019t make it to tour. But he estimated that, historically, four out of every five things they tried eventually had. The point remained: the institutions of tennis were willing to rewrite the rules of tennis.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have to move faster these days because of the way the entertainment world is forcing change\u2026 if you don\u2019t grow at a certain pace, you will be left behind,\u201d Hutchins told me.<\/p>\n

Like any culture, there\u2019s a tension between tradition and modernity, and during Next Gen, I tried to be a good sport and embrace the latter. Watching tennis live is as much of an aural experience as it is a visual one. During the matches, I closed my eyes and focused on the sounds: the thwack of the ball, the squeaking of sneakers, and the boom of the PA announcer declaring the point\u2019s winner. In Jeddah, though, when I would ordinarily hear applause, all I picked up was silence, like a space waiting to be filled. But with what?<\/em> I wondered.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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The full Hawk-Eye setup consists of a dozen cameras hard-wired around the perimeter court \u2014 eight in use, four for redundancy \u2014 a system that uses over $100K in equipment.<\/p>\n

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The cameras are calibrated, a process that takes three days.<\/p>\n

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