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The ATP Tour tried to tweak some things on the doubles side in Madrid this year. But more on that later.

The next experiment will be at the Gstaad tournament, which takes place the week after Wimbledon on clay and will boast an anomalously impressive field this year, because of the looming Olympic event on the clay at Roland Garros.

Per the tournament, the doubles field will be reduced from the usual 16 to 12, which means the top four teams will have byes. And the matches will only begin on Wednesday.

The time between points will be reduced to 18 seconds (which is actually 15 seconds, plus the three seconds after the end of the point the chair umpire waits to start the clock), and only 45 seconds (instead of 90) on the changeovers. That’s even shorter than the “Madrid experiment” in early May.

As in Madrid, fans will be able to come in and out as they please during the match; they won’t have to wait for changeovers. In the first experiment they weren’t allowed to move around behind the baseline. This time, it’s game on everywhere.

(All screenshots from TennisTV).

The Madrid experiment was … interesting

Back in early May, we tuned in to some of the doubles matches, to see how the rules tweaks they were trying out played out in real life.

Among those tweaks:

-The doubles was played from Tuesday through Saturday, the “second week” of Madrid, with the draw being made only on the Monday to perhaps attract players eliminated early from singles who had nowhere else to go until Rome.

-In the 32 draw, 16 teams were accepted in advance, on a “doubles-only” rankings basis. Another six teams were accepted with a criteria of “top-10 singles player with a top-50 doubles player”. And seven more were accepted on site on Sunday, signing in, based upon their singles rankings. Plus three wild cards. Sounded … logistically complicated.

-The doubles-only teams were placed first. And then the others were added. The theory being it would create “an unprecedented number of matchups between the world’s top doubles and singles players” and “add compelling new narratives for fans”.

-As well, that same “18-second” (15+3) shot clock was instituted. But that only applied to rallies that lasted less than four shots. When it was four shots or more, the regular 25 seconds applied. This made for a lot of math for the chair umpires, who fortunately in Madrid had electronic line calling and didn’t have to deal with that on the clay court.

-There was to be no sit-down or drink break after the first changeover – or at ANY time except on the set breaks. The breaks in Madrid were 60 seconds, and 90 seconds between sets. (That didn’t seem to last too long as a concept).

-The fans were allowed to move about freely – except behind the baselines.

From theory to reality – a mind exercise

In the old days, there were few rallies beyond three shots in doubles. But that has obviously changed with many teams playing a whole lot more from the baseline.

So, it was incumbent upon them (and the chair umpire) to remember how quick (or long) the points were, with the allowed time between points changing as a consequence.

In the doubles we watched, there were VERY few time violations called. And you KNOW the chair umpires really didn’t want to call them.

But Marcel Granollers got called in his first service game. And he wasn’t happy about it.

In his first service game, Granollers took 21 seconds, 18 seconds, 20 seconds, 26 1/2 seconds, 22 seconds and 21 seconds between points.

By his second game, he was at 22 seconds before the fourth point, and that’s when he got dinged for the time violation. As it happened, he wasted about a minute arguing about it with chair umpire Jimmy Pinoargote. Which kind of defeated the purpose.

After he held for 2-1, Granollers went to sit down – then jumped back up. As the fans literally scrambled to find their seats in that 60-second time frame.

Their opponents, Tallon Griekspoor and Wesley Koolhof, DID dit down.

In Horacio Zeballos’s second time serving, he was still in “get four balls from the ballkid and pick one of them” mode. And he went more than 20 seconds on every single point of his service game. At 40-30, up to 24 seconds, he caught his toss and went again. Sneaky!!!

In the match involving the Tsitsipas brothers (who are kind of slow anyway), Petros Tsitsipas once took 24 seconds to serve … after a double-fault in the previous point. He was pokey all along – until he got a warning before the 30-40 point.

He hustled it up on the sudden-death deuce point after that, clocking in at exactly 18 seconds.

Tsitsis do their thing

The Tsitsipas brothers wanted nothing to with the “no sit-down” rule.

Facing Belgians Vliegen and Gille, who didn’t sit down and found themselves at the baseline ready to play long before time was called, the Tsitsipas brothers did what they were in the mood to do.

Amongst the quicker ones on court were Tommy Paul and Daniil Medvedev, who were playing together as part of the crop using their singles ranking.

Leading to … this all-timer of a graphic:

Reaction? Soares not a fan

In the end, it was a bit of a dog’s breakfast, as you would expect.

But the intended effect on the quality of the draw didn’t really materialize. Nor did those “compelling singles v doubles players matchups”.

I was waiting to see the draw in Madrid to give my opinion on the new doubles entry format.
Awful to say the list. Having a combine team 441 playing there it’s terrible for the sport.
Good try, terrible outcome. Mistakes happen for us to learn from them.
Let’s get back
— Bruno Soares (@BrunoSoares82) April 28, 2024

A number of teams that had entered ended up repairing: Medvedev/Safiullin and Fritz/Paul ended up being … Medvedev/Paul.

Griekspoor/Hurkacz and Koolhof/Mektic ended up being … Griekspoor/Koolhof. Stefanos Tsitsipas/Haase ended up being Haase/Martin and Tsitsipas/Tsitsipas.

Bublik/Shelton ended up being Bublik/Shapovalov.

Embed from Getty Images

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The “singles entries” ended up being teams like Karatsev/Zhang, Cachin/Kotov and Cobolli/Monteiro.

Not to mention Benjamin Hassan and Abdullah Shelbayh – combined singles ranking 414.

With the result that other “doubles specialists” teams that hadn’t been able to get in on the original 16 found out – rather last minute – that they could get into a Masters 1000 event after all, with the prize money that goes with it. Which (and we didn’t check this) might well have led to absolute carnage with the trickle-down effect to the Challenger doubles draws during those two weeks.

Ariel Behar and Adam Pavlasek were one of those teams. And they ended up making the final.

The winners ended up being unseeded (mostly) singles players Sebastian Korda and Jordan Thompson.

Who ended up splitting a purse of nearly 400,000 EUROS.

All in all, it probably would have been a better idea to start with the experiments at smaller tournaments like Gstaad and go from there, rather than do it at a Masters 1000 tournament with so many points and so much prize money at stake for the doubles guys.