JOIN USThe taxing five-set test
When Wimbledon begins on Monday, it will be notable for the absence of the 14-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal and for the presence of the 17-time major winner Roger Federer, who is still trying to recover from a back injury that forced him to miss the French Open.
Had a 1970s experiment with a shorter format in the early rounds of Grand Slam events not been discarded, it is possible things might have been different.
The bruising nature of the men’s tour, with players bigger than ever, a predominantly baseline style that leads to long rallies, the homogenisation of court surfaces and the increasing emphasis on physicality have caused many top players to take time off for injuries in recent years.
At Grand Slam events, players have wilted as matches stretch past three hours, particularly in the heat of Melbourne, Australia, and Flushing Meadows, Queens. At last year’s US Open, 10 men retired from their first-round matches. Watching Andy Murray visibly tire in the final of the French Open last month, it was easy to wonder what might have been had he not had to play five sets in each of his first two rounds.
Then again, if the French Open had used a best-of-three format in the first two rounds, as it did from 1973 to 1975, Murray would have been eliminated long before the final. Still, concerns about extending players’ careers have led to questioning the best-of-five format for men’s singles at Grand Slam events.
Men play best-of-five matches only at majors and in Davis Cup matches. Other ATP Tour events and all WTA tournaments have a best-of-three-set format. (The fact that men play best-of-five at the Grand Slam events and women do not is an argument used often by critics of equal prize money.)
Most male players, past and present, say that the best-of-five-set format represents the truest test, physically and mentally. To change it, they say, would affect how Grand Slam champions are compared to those of the past. But in the 1970s, the decade in which television helped increase prize money and transform tennis into a truly global sport, three of the four Grand Slam events tested a best-of-three-set format in the men’s event.
The Australian Open started the ball rolling in the 1973 and ’74 tournaments, in which only the first-round matches were best-of-three. The French Open was best-of-three in the first two rounds in 1973, 1974 and 1975; and the US Open tried it in the first three rounds in 1975, 1976 and 1978 and through the fourth round in 1977. According to a June 17, 1975, article in The New York Times, the change in format at the US Open was made to accompany the switch from grass courts to clay.
“The reason for the change was that the matches on clay were expected to last longer than on grass because of more extended rallies,” the article said.
In the three US Opens leading up to the change, first-round matches were often one-sided. From 1972 to 1974, 104 of the 192 first-round matches were won in straight sets, including retirements. Only 26 matches went five sets, and only 15 would have seen a different result had they been played best-of-three.
In 1979, a year after the tournament moved to the National Tennis Center from the West Side Tennis Club and switched to hardcourts, the tournament returned to a best-of-five format. There were 37 straight-sets wins in the first round and 14 five-set matches, and six matches would have had different outcomes over the shorter format.
Forty-odd years on, the memory of those involved is understandably hazy, but John McEnroe, who first played at the US Open in 1977, said the top players believed the longer format favoured them because of their superior fitness.
“I did lose in the round of 16 in the US Open in 1977, my first Open, 6-2, 6-3, and it seemed like it happened too fast,” McEnroe said in a conference call.
Manolo Santana, who won three Grand Slam singles titles in the 1960s, remembered that players were not too happy about the best-of-three format. “I think it was done because some of the early matches were very quick, and then the television people wanted it,” he said at the French Open last month.
Frew McMillan, a South African who won 10 Grand Slam titles in doubles and mixed, said the players were happy when the experiment ended. “I think any player with any history of the game, not only through their own experience but looking back over the years, all the majors stood out and were played over five sets,” McMillan, now a commentator for Eurosport, said. “It was very much a routine for us, and so to reduce events in the majors to three sets in some ways reduced the value in our eyes.”
The 1975 World of Tennis yearbook includes one withering paragraph about the 1974 French Open.
“A distasteful feature of the men’s singles was the decision once again to play two rounds over the best of three sets and the rest over the best of five,” it read. “This broke the rhythm of the tournament and asked players to transform themselves from sprinters into stayers.”
The 1976 book refers to the format in a more positive way, saying that “abbreviated matches helped (raw youngsters) take the strain (of a packed schedule).”
Wimbledon is the only one of the four Grand Slam tournaments not to have tried the shortened format. The oldest and most famous of the four majors prides itself on tradition, upholding, as it often says, everything that is great about tennis while being open to innovation. An email statement from Wimbledon said officials there were not aware of any discussion in the past about a possible change of format.
“We consider five sets to be the ultimate test for a tennis player in the men’s game, and there are no plans to change the format at the Championships,” the statement said.
McEnroe said tennis should always think of ways to improve itself.
“I don’t think the door should be closed on saying that women would never play best-of-five or guys will never play best-of-three,” he said. “I think it’s something that’s an ongoing discussion.”
Eric Butorac, the president of the ATP Player Council, said in an email, “In all my discussions in previous years, most players were in favor of staying with the best-of-five format despite the congestion.”