Today’s version of Wimbledon, “Wimpledon” or “Wimpy” is a side to side sport with little movement up or down towards the net. In basketball we have the 3 pointer, the slam dunk and the mid range jumper. In football the short yardage run, the trap play, mid-range passing games and the long bomb. In baseball the singles hitter, hit and run plays, suicide squeezes and the long ball. In tennis, we have side to side movement and not much else.
Changing the Rules to Pump up Tennis has Failed!
As stale tennis goes, “Wimpy” is heads above anyone else. Not certain what it wanted to be, in 2001 after a 5 set final between Goran Ivanisevic and Patrick Rafter, featuring 40 aces or about 1 every two games. (You can re-watch that match here) The powers that be feared that the power service game would take over the last major fast surface tournament on the tour. The tourney directors killed what made Wimbledon unique and turned it into just another tourney. First they accepted the 32 seed draw approach which reduced upsets of the top seeds then they slowed down the surface in an effort to reduce aces and the power game. As Greg Garber of ESPN explained, “Once, grass was the fastest surface in tennis. But after Goran Ivanisevic and Patrick Rafter turned the 2001 final into an ace-fest, Wimbledon slowed things down. The original mix was 70 percent rye grass and 30 percent creeping red fescue, but now it is 100 percent rye. Because rye sits up higher than fescue, the greater friction slows the ball down. Plus, players say, the balls are bigger today than they’ve ever been. The result is a higher bounce than before” The consequences were immediate. Wimpledon’s ratings plummeted by a million viewers and has not reached the heights of the 2001 finals since as documented by Nielsen.
This year you wear red and I’ll wear blue.
Next year I’ll wear red and you wear blue.
Wimpy’s final has featured the first seed against the second seed in seven of the last eight years. In several cases one year’s final is replayed the next. Americans, faced with the same match they saw the year before with the same predictable result, turned off their televisions. Ratings have sunk for Wimpy from an all time high of more than 8 million people watching the Bjorn Borg vs John McEnroe match in 1981 to less than 2 million people watching last year’s Rafael Nadal win. Percentage wise, more than 4 percent of Americans watched pro tennis in 1980 versue less than 1% today. One third the variety and more predictability equals less than one third the fans. Tennis is in the dumpster, in the ESPN universe it is behind high school sports and soccer but narrowly maintains its advantage over mixed martial arts and poker. ESPN has just acquired the rights for all US broadcasts of Wimpy for $40 million annually, or about a 30% discount from the US Open.
They Might be Giants
Besides the predictability factor the game has suffered the unintended advent of giants which makes it far less accessible to the average fan. As you remember, the court was changed to slow the ball down and stop giant tennis players hurling aces at each other. However, slowing the court down assisted the giants as the ball popped up and they no longer had to bend down to hit balls. In the 30 years before the change in surfaces, a dozen players over 6’4” reached the last 16 at Wimbledon (Philippoussis, Safin, Stich, Todd Martin,Rosset, Rusedski and Krajicek), all were serve and volleyers. Since the rules changed 10 years ago, a dozen people over 6’4” (Karlovic, Safin, Popp, Del Potro, Rusedski, Krajicek, Philippoussis, Querrey, Soderling, Ancic, Cilic, Berdych, etc) have more frequently reached the round of 16. Outside of Karlovic, none of the new players are true serve and volleyers.
The “Isner-angle”
Slowing down the surface has had almost no effect on the number of aces as giant tennis players don’t need velocity to hit the ace. Instead they hit angle serves as Jon Isner displayed when he hit 113 aces in 100 service games in last years record-setting Wimpy match for duration against Nicholas Mahut . Mahut hit 103 aces. There were a total of 216 aces in a total of 188 games or more than an ace a game. So much for effectiveness in stopping the big serve.
We call the new service angle , the “Isner-angle” for a serve that could not be hit consistently in tennis in the past without the advent of the new tennis giants and new racquet technology. The serve lands on the sideline but about 1 to 2 feet before the service line. It is unreturnable since a player would have to run 5-6 steps to catch a ball going on average 120 mph. If a player moves over to get the ”Isner-angle”, then Isner types can easily serve the ball down the middle. Watch this video of Isner’s serve. After his jump, he is well inside the baseline hitting the ball about 2 feet in front of it from a fully extended height between 10-11 feet.
Since there is no variety or chance of upset in the game, and since 7 of the last 8 finals have been between the first and second seed, a tennis viewer need ask two questions. Who is playing? Didn’t I see that last year? In it’s utter predictability, American tennis viewership is near dead.
Tennis Viewership is On Life Support, Change the Rules
Like a 12 steps program, Wimpledon must admit its failure and fix the surface and big server problem to restore the game to it’s prior grandeur. Look at other pro sports. When Wilt Chamberlain was too big for basketball they changed the rules specifically for him, they widened the lane and initiated the 3 second rule. In baseball when too many home runs were being hit, they raised the pitcher’s mound.
In this case it is easy to restore 3 surfaces of varying speed and eliminate the “Isner-angle”. Though Andy Roddick has the fastest serve in tennis, he has proven beatable at the majors due to his lack of variety in the serve. Likewise he gives away where his serve is going well in advance with a non-disguised lean in one direction or the other. So the issue is the big guys and in particular, the “Isner-angle”. The existing solution to the “Isner-angle” doesn’t work. Isner and the other giants on the tour continue to hit the angle serve.
The rules change have not eliminated the ace for the small percent of men who hit angles, but it has slowed down the surface for 100% of the people who play at Wimpy as well as the US Open. This has killed the short and mid tennis game, as baseliners take out anyone who dares to rush the net as approach shots bounce higher and slower than ever. The big serve has not turned out to be the threat perceived by pro tennis management, but the “Isner-angle” has brought in an era of giant angle servers who win on every surface as the ball bounces up so they can take massive swings at it. Also a legion of long range only tennis players have arisen, few different from the other in style of play but clogging the game so no new names can move in to popularize the sport. As of this writing only one teenager is in the ATP top 100 rankings.
Our solution is to make “Isner-angle” serves illegal by drawing a box or line that eliminates the angle. Who would be impacted? Only a handful of giant players who are on the tour purely because of their ability to hit angle serves and have a foot and half serving advantage when including arm length over a 6 foot tall opponent. Add another 1 to 2 feet advantage with a jump serve and giants have a 2-3 foot advantage on angles vs a 6 foot tall player. Of those giants, only a small percent of their serves would be impacted while making the overall matches more competitive and adding to the diversity of the game.
But how do you call points where the lines are altered? It is very easy to use shot spot to call these points and to have a wire into linesemen’s ears that tells them where the ball landed. If the concern is over short balls, a second linesman can be setup directly across the umpire in a high chair to cover short balls on that side.
How does tennis manage this wrinkle in the game? The same way the NBA or NFL does. Every year they have a meeting and would decide what angle of serves should be allowed. It’s Wimpledon’s choice to revive tennis or not.
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