Wimbledon 2018: The interminably long men’s semi-finals
This year, the women’s final was
hit by scheduling chaos. Unlike in previous years, it was not due to the
weather but instead the men’s semi-finals over-running. The previous day,
Anderson eventually beat Isner 26-24 in the 5th set after 6hrs 36mins.
The final set took nearly 3hrs to complete. I agree with Anderson that a 5th
set tie-break should be introduced at Wimbledon. He mentioned that playing a
match for that long means you don’t feel very well as a result. I think it
cannot be healthy to play a match for that long or longer. Tennis is one of the
most demanding sports because, unlike most other sports, it requires both
aerobic and anaerobic exercise, bursts of strength as well as stamina.
Generally, men are more suited to quicker bursts of strength than endurance and
stamina so I don’t see the scientific sense in making them play for so long,
potentially risking their long-term health. The glorification of the 5 set
format for men is too often seen as a macho badge of honour and described as
heroic. I’ve noticed 5 set matches give rise to more sexist biased language
than men’s 3 set matches. It promotes male players as being some sort of
mythical god-like character. This is mostly generated by the gendered language
of commentators, presenters and some sports journalists. For instance, Boris Becker
used descriptions such as superheroes, while Sue Barker called them warriors
completing a 5 set epic. However, when women have longer matches they are often
labelled something negative eg they are called chokers who can’t close out a
match either through lack of skill or some supposed psychological problem with
winning. In other words, people attribute weakness not strength when it’s about
women players and how long it takes them to clinch a win. For instance, Halep
assumed she lost her big lead, which resulted in her defeat, due to her not
being professional enough, rather than seeing it as an epic match between
warriors and superheroes where one player managed to Houdini out of a tight
situation. So perhaps sports commentators’ unconscious bias is somewhat
absorbed by female players who then take-on the negative language, attitude and
perception they hear and end up believing it of themselves. Furthermore, it is
easy to forget that women’s 2 or 3 set matches need not take less time than men’s
5 sets. The longest women’s match on record was in 1984, when Vicki Nelson beat
Jean Hepner 6–4, 7–6 (13–11). This 2 set match took 6hrs 31mins to complete
which is about the same length as the Anderson-Isner match. The latter only 5
minutes longer. The Nelson v Hepner match was an amazing one because it
included the longest rally in tennis history, a 643-shot rally!
Tennis having different playing
requirements between men and women makes it extremely out of step compared to
other sports which have one standard of achievement for both sexes.
So should both sexes play 5 sets
or both play 3 sets? I think I would
have benefited from having extra sets in my matches because it would have given
me more time to get into the match which is helpful if you have less match
practice, don’t know your opponent and don’t have on-court coaching. It’s
harder to make a come-back when you are up against the clock too, making the
score line more unforgiving. I also learnt in a post-match analysis that I’d
won twice as many points in the 2nd set than in the first despite
the score appearing much the same. So a 3rd set would have given me
vital extra time to improve even more and possibly find a way to win. So maybe
5 sets and round robins at lower ITF levels would be beneficial for players
because they would get more hours of match play at each tournament. This would
mean they gain valuable experience faster because, at the beginning, everybody’s poor win/loss ratio means they are not gaining any rhythm and momentum by
playing back to back matches. While being match-tight, as it were, does not
matter for intellectual, sedentary pursuits, it can be a hindrance in sport.
ITF players are also fresher having been on the tour for less years. Therefore,
it would be less physically wearing for them to play more sets especially since
they general don’t get deep into tournaments on a regular basis. However, this is not the case for many top
players who worry more about early rounds and find them trickier than later
ones and say that they rarely play their best tennis early on. Despite this, we
expect ITF players who are new to the tour to jump into 1st rounds (often sporadically
and somewhat unexpectedly) during the year and yet play their best tennis to
progress through several rounds of several tournaments before they can gain
prize money or world ranking points. Nevertheless, large draws are still
greatly beneficial to lower-ranked and unranked players because it gives them
more options for entering a greater number of tournaments. So larger draws
would still need to be continued if 5 sets or round robins were introduced. I’m
sure top women players would be just as capable as the men of playing 5 sets in
the Grand Slams and indeed some women have already stated they’d be happy to do
so. Women singles players are not only extremely fit and have lots of stamina,
they often play doubles and mixed doubles during slams so spend many more hours
on court than the length of their singles matches. Perhaps men’s doubles would
be more popular with men’s singles players if they didn’t have to play 5 sets. Unlike
top women, top male singles players rarely or never play doubles at slams so
all their energies are put into singles. In terms of scheduling, I think it may
become very messy to have 5 types of events all playing 3 to 5 sets each.
Currently at Wimbledon, men’s doubles play up to 5 sets (with no tiebreak in
the 5th). So, merely asking the women’s singles draw to play up to 5
sets would still leave it unequal in doubles. So either the men’s doubles would
reduce to 2 to 3 sets long or women’s doubles would also play 3 to 5 sets. And then
that leaves the question of whether mixed-doubles should stay as best of 3 sets.
Once women are used to playing 5 sets, there would be no reason to shorten the
mixed doubles on account of them. Perhaps it would be easier for both men’s and
women’s singles draws to play 3 to 5 sets while all doubles matches are 2 to 3
sets long, to best avoid scheduling disruption. It would then be much the same
as it is now in that only 2 events play 5 sets. All that changes is that
instead of it being men’s singles and doubles, it would be men’s and women’s
singles.
Nevertheless, I’ve never seen how
5 sets really enhance a 3 set match. When the semi-final between Nadal and
Djokovic stopped play at 11pm on Friday, Djokovic was 2 sets to 1 up. So had it
been a 3 set match, Djokovic would be declared the winner there and then. All
men’s semis would have been neatly concluded on the Friday, and so no disruption
to the women’s final the next day. Given it was a potentially 5 set match, why
was the match between Nadal and Djokovic put on centre court at 8pm on Friday, knowing
that they’d have to stop by 11pm due to regulations? If they had been changed
to court 1 then they could have started earlier and, if necessary, continued on
Saturday (preferably starting 11.30am). In this way, the men’s semi would not
have disrupted the women’s final on centre.
After all, the women’s doubles was
moved off to court 1 while men’s doubles remained on centre. This deprived the
women’s doubles final from being played in front of the Royal Box and meant
they had to repeat their trophy ceremony a second time (once on court 1 and
then again on centre once the men’s doubles finished). A complete mess!
Leaving aside the issue of sexist
scheduling favouring men and their matches designed to upstage women’s finals
day, did we really need to hold up the women’s final, disrupt their preparation
for it, just to find out that Djokovic won 3 sets to 2 instead of 2 sets to 1? Being
a 5 set match continuing into Saturday, starting 1pm and lasting a further 2 ½ hrs,
the result was the same as the previous day, Djokovic won. A pointless
exercise!
Even Conchita Martinez was seen
on TV stifling a yawn by 2:40pm during the semi on Saturday! She was not alone
in her reaction. Many fans on social media commented that they felt the same
tiredness at yet another very long men’s match. This was also true of some
journalists reporting on the matches soon after. There was also an impatience with
having to wait hours for the women’s final to start, which should be billed as
the main highlight of the day not just another match following the men’s. Not only did many viewers find the seemingly
endless men’s matches boring and difficult to sit through, some began to find the
see-sawing final set with no tiebreaker almost comical. So I fail to see why some
people insist 5 set matches are a must-have that are good for the men’s game or
that they are particularly popular with fans.
I always thought men should play
best of 3 sets not 5 and was pleased to discover that Billie Jean King feels the
same way about it. I agree that many of the men’s serious injuries may well be
caused by the physical demands of 5 set matches at the slams. For an article on
this see:
This is also not good for men’s
tennis all year round. Slams are only 4 times a year and can be expensive to
attend as a spectator. The ATP and ITF tours are all year round where the men play
2 to 3 sets. These, more accessible tournaments to attend, perhaps suffer as a
result of the strains of 5 set matches at slams. So I find it surprising why
people, especially men, seem so passionately attached to the idea of playing 5
sets. Even if men are not interested in how it negatively impacts on the women’s
matches and game, surely they have reasons relating to the men’s game to see
why 5 set matches are a problem, be it health, scheduling, slowing down matches
and viewers’ boredom. Perhaps there is
the pressure of a toxic macho culture telling them to take pride in showing
they can pull off a feat the women players don’t demonstrate themselves at the
slams. However, women have experimented with playing 5 sets at other
tournaments, decades ago, and were perfectly capable of rising to the physical
challenges, despite not being used to it. So it is not a uniquely male achievement
to boast about. It merely comes down to the fact that men are given the opportunity
to play more sets unlike the women. So it says more about how tennis is
organised than about athletic ability. It is, therefore, not really an athletic
achievement that needs special praise.
Fascinating recent scientific
research has shown that 3 sets may be making it harder for the top female seeds
to progress through the grand slams:
Indeed, this year, more top
female seeds fell than is the norm and it was the first time all top 10 seeds
lost before the quarter finals. So rather than the 3 set format being easier
for the top women, it actually makes it tougher in many ways. Hence, I see no
force in men’s argument (eg Djokovic) that men should be paid more because they
do 5 sets. I suspect this is the only reason men want to put themselves through
5 sets! It’s an excuse to keep bringing up the issue of equal pay which has already
been resolved but some male players wish to turn back the clock. 5 sets in
itself doesn’t guarantee longer matches or more effort. Both a men’s and women’s
match can last 3 sets and take roughly the same amount of time. Yet comparisons
are often drawn between extremes such as a women’s short 2 set match and a long
men’s 5 set match. The men’s 1881 Wimbledon final lasted just 36 mins (6-0, 6-1,
6-1). Fred Perry won his Wimbledon title in 1936 in just 40 mins (6-1, 6-1, 6-0). Yet men do
not get paid less when their match is shorter than other men’s matches. In
fact, given the research findings above, it seems that top male players actually
have an easier time making it through to the end of tournament. And looking at
past draws, there are certainly less upsets on the men’s side than the women’s.
So the data so far bears out in practice, including at this year’s
Championships. Perhaps the lower-ranked men would benefit from playing 3 sets instead
of 4 or 5 sets because they’d have a better shot at beating top seeds and
winning the title. The top male seeds may worry about this as they try to amass
many titles, records and dominate the game. However, it might create more depth
in the men’s game which has been lacking for many years.
I see nothing objectively in
favour of having such long matches at the slams. It also seems rather illogical
and contradictory these days. On the one hand, there is a current obsession
with reducing the time players take between points by introducing the stop
clock and making them stick to their allocated 25 seconds. Those in favour of a
stop clock say spectators get bored if they have to sit through watching
players get ready for the point. There’s also a strict time allowance for how
long Nadal can take to merely change his shirt at a change of ends or end of
set break. Some even suggest introducing a time limit on how long players are even
allowed to have a bathroom break! Yet, ironically, spectators are expected to
keep their interest and concentration throughout long 5 set matches which have
no time limit on how long they can potentially last, especially if there is no
final set tie-break giving no approximate end in sight. The longest 5 set match
at Wimbledon on record was 11hrs 5mins. Many spectators’ reactions on social
media to the Anderson-Isner match was a mixture of humour that neither could
clinch the match and sheer boredom of sitting there watching the same, one
match over the course of around 6 ½ hrs. Despite this current trend towards
faster matches this concept is not cross-applied to 5 set matches.
It was totally unacceptable to
make the women’s finalists wait about for the men’s semi to finish. It plays
havoc with their preparation, not just practice time but how to schedule when
to eat, how much to eat, psychological preparation, how active you can afford
to be prior to the match not to mention the stress of not knowing when you are
on. This makes it hard to have the right level of adrenalin. The final is,
surely, one match which should not be subject to any organisational disruption!
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