Tennis Powers-That-Be Look To Rein In Speedy Men’s Game

On Tuesday, June 20, six days before the start of Wimbledon, the ITF will convene a meeting in London of 40 to 50 major tennis figures to begin discussions on how to slow down the men’s game.

On the agenda are such radical topics as reverting back to wooden rackets and limiting serves to one.

This is not going to be one of those go-nowhere intellectual exercises. The strong probability, if you talk to people connected with the ITF, the ruling body of international tennis, is that something is going to get done within the next two years.

Going back to wooden rackets, however, will not be one of them. There are too many of us club players out here who no longer can play with wooden rackets, and Prince, Wilson, Head and the rest of the equipment companies aren’t going to be allowed to go belly up. Not with the money they’ve got in sponsorship. Furthermore, it would take the players a year to learn how to make the transition. It’s an absurd proposal.

I also doubt you’ll see a one-serve game.

The meeting is not being well advertised. No one wants to throw the public into a mild hysteria about major changes in the game. And nothing is going to be passed or voted on at this conference.

But people in tennis know about it and there is major interest. Among those factions who will be represented are the WTA and the ATP. There will be current players, former players, coaches and, most importantly, manufacturers.

Here are four things I think probably are going to get support and be changed within the next two years:

Get back to the previous foot-fault rule. That’s where you had to serve with at least one foot touching the surface on the back side of the baseline. Watch Boris Becker and some of the other big boys. They’re 12 inches off the ground with both feet when they make contact the serve. That’s one reason you see the ball traveling at blur speed.

Raise the height of the net at the center by 3 inches. That would make it 42 inches at the net posts and 39 inches at the middle. No big deal, really. But it will take away a significant number of 125-mph aces down the center service line.

Slow the court surface. On clay that means a damper top, which will also make the balls heavier and more difficult to bang hard. Or it could mean top-dressing the clay with more material, which which will keep the ball drier but slow it when it hits the dirt. On hardcourt, it would mean a grittier top coating that grabs at the ball more. This will have the effect of reducing a ball-on-glass effect, where it hits and takes off. It will also cause the ball to fluff earlier, slowing it.

Vary the ball pressure. This already is being done to some extent. If this rule is passed, it will give the men’s tour the opportunity to use softer balls.

Obviously, the rules changes are aimed at the men’s game. No one thinks the women’s game has gotten too fast. And the meeting couldn’t come at a better time. Last year’s Wimbledon was a sham, a three-stroke-a-point final between Pete Sampras and Goran Ivanisevic.

With 50 people in the room this is one of those meetings that could easily turn into an all-day talk-a-thon in which it is impossible to get a consensus. And that is what the ITF wants more than anything out of this meeting - direction.

There are going to be a lot of interests in that room and, with the meeting in London, you can bet there will be a fair number of intractable purists who want the equipment and style of the game returned to the days of Rod Laver. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone recommends doing away with color in tennis clothing.

That is not going to happen. The ITF may run the game, but it is the manufacturers who drive the game. Conversely, the manufacturers, who couldn’t give a twit about the speed of the game, since they’re in it for the dough, are going to have to make concessions to the integrity of tennis.

The game is, in fact, on the verge of being completely out of control. There are precious few smaller players and the racket technology seems to be creating new and more powerful metals every other year.

“The rackets have gone too far,” an ITF official said. “But we are not going to be able to change them. Maybe we can prevent them from getting any more powerful.”

The big rackets, which reward the bigger, more powerful players, make it harder to get more smaller players.

It won’t be easy to makes these changes. “I think generally there is a concern about the speed and the power of the game from those who watch it every week,” said the gentleman from the ITF.

“But those people who only see tennis a few times a year … look at the big men who hit so hard and they go, ‘Wow, I wish I could do that.”’