Game for three sets

The eternal debate over whether men’s Grand Slam tennis tournaments should be five sets or three sets unexpectedly reared its head again at the season-ending ATP Finals in London. Given a year when the tennis calendar was severely truncated by the Covid-19 pandemic and Wimbledon was cancelled this was a strange time for the question to come up. The context, perhaps, is the rival Players Association headed by World No.1 Novak Djokovic which aims to introduce changes to the sport, three-set Grand Slams among them.

Mr Djokovic’s argument for shorter Grand Slams is that the tennis calendar is unusually heavy — from January through November with players obliged to play almost every week to maintain their ranking points. In effect, then, they get just a month off of which at least half is gobbled up in training for the upcoming season starting January. The higher ranked the player, the greater the pressure. He may have a point: In most other key sports, players get two months off, or at least one and a half months if you factor in time for training.

Yet here’s the surprise: Not one among the top-ranked players agreed with him. Asked about the proposal during the ATP Finals tournament, Rafael Nadal, joint holder of a record 20 Grand Slam titles with Roger Federer, had this to say in his engagingly idiomatic English:  “I mean, winning Grand Slam, playing best-of-three demand to the player something else, no? Stronger mentally, stronger physically, be solid for such a long time and for such a long two weeks. So I really believe that's the right thing to do.” 

For a champion who has suffered the rigours of his unique brand of power tennis and undergone any number of surgeries, this is an interesting position to take. Mr Nadal, 34, knows a thing or two about five sets. The epic quarter-final victory over Dominic Thiem in the 2018 US Open, which ended in the small hours of the morning, forced a retirement in the semi-final against Juan Martin Del Potro three days later. Not that this prevented him winning from a tense five-setter against Daniil Medvedev last year to lift the US Open trophy for the fourth time in his career.

In that match Mr Nadal won the first two sets, lost the next two and came back to win the fifth decisively. In the finals of the ATP Finals this year, where he met Mr Medvedev again, he won the first set, lost the second in a closely contested tie-break and lost the third. Would the outcome have been different had the match been a five setter?

That the “three-set move” has some traction is evident from the fact that the ATP Masters 1000 tournaments (which means the winner gets 1000 ranking points) switched from five- to three-setters in 2008. But the reason the Grand Slam has proved less open to change is that it confers 2,000 ranking points, the highest after the 1,500 of the ATP Finals and therefore the highest prize money.  

Beyond demands on players from the crowded tennis calendar, two arguments have been forwarded in defence of the three-set switch. First, spectators have less time to spend watching five set matches, especially those that go on into all hours of the night (the same reason, for instance, that the one day international overtook Test cricket in popularity and, in turn, was overtaken by the 20-over version).

To this it can be said that not all five-setters run the limit. Also, discomfiture over the length of a match depends on the fan and also on who’s playing. John Isner and Milos Raonic are easily among the most boring players on the circuit, whether they play five setters or three. But Messrs Nadal, Federer and Djokovic? They’re watchable for any amount of time.

The second argument is linked to gender parity. This is a touchy issue, ironic in a sport that has far more gender parity than almost any other. Top-level women’s tennis, including Grand Slams, are all three-setters but the winners earn the same prize money as the men, a fact that earns derisive comment at least once a season. Why should men play more and earn the same?

There is some merit to this argument. One way to sort this out would be to raise the prize money for men. The other way to do it could be to have women play five setters in Grand Slams. Certainly, given the state of the women’s game today, where Grand Slams have become revolving doors through which champions emerge and vanish with rising frequency, this may not be a bad idea. Women players themselves say they are ready to play five setters. It’s tournament organisers who claim that spectators don’t want to see women play five sets.

The issue is unlikely to be resolved soon. Interestingly, the staunchest three-set advocate is Mr Djokovic, 33, the youngest of the Big Three who have dominated the game for the past 20 years, and just three Grand Slam titles behind Messrs Nadal and Federer, 39, both of whom are still going strong. The question may well be settled after they retire.