A relative lack of television coverage and fan and media attention means that doubles players often toil in obscurity while their higher-profile peers in the singles ranks become sports celebrities. It therefore may not come as a surprise that as an event, doubles is underrepresented in the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Since the Hall began enshrining players in 1955, only five doubles-only Grand Slam winners—Pam Shriver, Rosie Casals, Bob Hewitt, Frew McMillan and Richard Ralston—have been inducted. Shriver, a 2002 inductee who won 20 of her 22 career Grand Slam doubles titles with Martina Navratilova, is the most recent doubles specialist to be enshrined at Newport. Many of the top doubles teams of the last 20 years, including Jacco Eltingh-Paul Haarhuis and Gigi Fernandez-Natasha Zvereva, have not even had their names on the nomination ballot.
The enshrinement process is fairly straightforward: A 21-person nomination committee meets annually at Wimbledon to discuss the composition of the ballot. A player must be off the tour for a minimum of five years to be considered for the recent player category, and a minimum of 20 years for the master player category.
Once the nomination ballot is set, a media panel consisting of 139 voters casts ballots, while master player nominees are voted on by an International Masters Panel, consisting of Hall of Fame enshrinees and other individuals who are highly knowledgeable of the sport. A 75-percent favorable vote is required for enshrinement.
Tony Trabert, President of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, says the lack of doubles specialists in Newport is a reflection of the struggle that doubles is facing in modern tennis.
“Nowadays, how many doubles teams do you really even have?” says Trabert. “There aren’t a lot of regular pairings and most of the top [singles] players don’t play [doubles]. Doubles has struggled overall. It wasn’t too long ago that people were thinking of abandoning it altogether, which I would hate to see happen.”
According to Trabert, a doubles player needs to have won titles at different Grand Slam events, or shown dominance (multiple titles) at one Slam, to be considered for nomination. By contrast, a singles player with just one Grand Slam title is eligible for the Hall’s ballot.
Despite the difference in criteria, Trabert says that the path to enshrinement is open for doubles players.
“I truly believe that our committee is as democratic as you can get,” says Trabert. “We don’t try to discriminate in any way and we have no reason to exclude doubles players. It can be hard to satisfy everyone, though. Even when Pam Shriver was inducted, there were some people who criticized us.”
Bud Collins, a 1994 Hall of Fame inductee in the contributor category and author of The Bud Collins History of Tennis, said the lack of enshrined doubles specialists is a result of the fact that the trend itself is relatively new to tennis.
“Doubles specialists are a recent trend because the top singles players don’t play doubles anymore,” said Collins via e-mail. “In the pre-big money days, all the top players played singles, doubles and mixed. It gives lesser players a greater opportunity now to specialize in doubles. They are not in the Hall of Fame because they are overall lesser players.”
Although doubles specialists have largely won the doubles Grand Slam titles in recent years, top singles players, particularly on the women’s side, do compete in doubles events throughout the year. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have each won doubles titles within the last 12 months, while seven of the women in the current Top 10 have won doubles events in 2009. Venus and Serena Williams have paired up to win nine career Grand Slam doubles titles, most recently at Wimbledon last month.
Lisa Raymond, ranked No. 7 in the world for doubles and a winner of nine Grand Slam doubles titles, said that the reason doubles specialists are winning major titles is not because there’s a dearth of top singles players in the doubles draw, but because doubles is a different game requiring a different set of on-court skills than that possessed by many highly-ranked singles players.
“A lot of the players in the Top 10 like (Victoria) Azarenka, (Caroline) Wozniacki and (Nadia) Petrova play a ton of doubles events,” says Raymond. “You might see them win a tournament here and there, but they certainly don’t sweep every week. It’s not that the top singles players aren’t playing. If anything, it’s just become more difficult to dominate in doubles over the years.”
With the relatively new trend of doubles specialists emerging in tennis, Trabert said there have been recent instances of doubles-only Grand Slam winners narrowly missing out on enshrinement, and he expected to see more doubles players being considered.
“Owen Davidson (winner of all four Grand Slam events in mixed doubles) was on the ballot recently and narrowly missed making the majority vote,” says Trabert of the Australian, who won the calendar Grand Slam in mixed doubles in 1967. “Because he was on for the last three years, he will now have to be off for the next two, but will certainly be considered again. The Woodies [Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde] will be eligible for enshrinement in 2010, and there are doubles teams currently on tour who would certainly be considered in the future.”
Raymond says she hopes to see more doubles specialists enshrined into the Hall of Fame, and says a stronger promotion of doubles could be a key component.
“If you take a team like the Bryan brothers and look at not only their on-court results, but what they’ve done for tennis in general, it would be a crime for them not to be considered once they retire,” says Raymond. “Unfortunately, there’s a cycle in doubles where the names aren’t as well known as they should be and it’s not shown on as television as much. Singles players are the ones the networks want to see and they bring in the money, but fans still fill the stands for a good doubles match.”
McCarton Ackerman is a New York City-based freelance writer.