I went round to the ESPN Zone restaurant on Times Square about a week ago to catch up with the Bryan Brothers, who were fresh off their doubles triumph at the Australian Open. Last year at this time, they had just completed the first leg of what they would later dub the “anti-slam” – losing in all four major finals of the same year. They narrowly averted that distinction cum anti-distinction by winning at the last major of the year, the U.S. Open.
By the time I arrived at the festivities, the only press pariahs left were a couple of girls from MTV; they were busy pumping Mike for gossip on, I think, Andy Roddick and Jessica Simpson. I, ever the mature and serious tennis journalist, was asking Bob really important questions, like, “So what do you do when the Leander Paes goes crosscourt instead of down-the-line with his backhand half-volley?”
The Bryans were coming off a busy few weeks during which they also played a few exhibitions; I assumed they had just been making hay while the sun shined - cashing in on what fame they have, while they have it.
But it turns out that the boys were on a more serious mission; the exos were fundraisers. The Bryans were looking for a way to recoup some of the legal fees they had poured into the lawsuit that became their big gun in the counter-offensive they mounted against the ATP’s move to kill doubles last summer. To further that end, an Atlanta exo may be in the works. So if you're a doubles fan, or simply appreciate the Bryans for taking matters into their own hands at considerable financial risk, you might want to attend.
The Bryans, together with their dad, Wayne, really stepped up and, working in conjunction with a few other activists, including Mark Knowles and Mahesh Bhupathi, saved doubles as we know it - that's Big Daddy Wayne playing tennis hat/tambourine, with Bob and Mike, in the picture.
“I felt especially bad for Mark (Knowles),” Bob told me. “He was in the trenches, lobbing grenades, and it got to him. It started to affect his play to the point that he had a kind of meltdown at Monte Carlo. He was exhausted. Beaten down.”
One of my regrets is that I didn’t get around to doing a “Man/Woman of the Year (2005)” post before I went off to the Australian Open. If you remember, I did cover the doubles controversy in “Zaniest Story of 2005: the Doubles Mess” (it’s available in the archives). If you read that, you’ll see why Wayne Bryan deserved to be 2005’s Man of the Year. Thanks in large part to Wayne’s leadership and tireless lobbying, the Band of Doubles Brothers succeed in swinging the doubles issue in an astonishing 180-degree turn. They held the ATPs feet to the fire and percipitated a doubles renaissance, instead of allowing the doubles to succumb to a pre-emptive strike.
Ultimately, the only concession the doubles players made was accepting no-ad scoring and a super-tiebreaker instead of a third-set. That’s no small matter, especially to purists. On the other hand, the scoring change means that doubles has a far better chance now of being seen, both live and on television, by a significant, prime-time audience. With matches that can now be counted on to last for no more than an hour and change, tournament directors can now schedule doubles with no fear of diminishing their marquee singles schedule.
“You have to remember that the scoring change is just an experiment,” Bob said. “We just decided we were willing to go along with it for a year. The no-ad system does introduce a little bit more luck into it, I think, but I don’t mind being the test monkey for it.”
Significantly, though, the ATP insists that it researched the issue and can empirically show that the statistical difference between results employing the two systems (traditional vs. no-ad) is negligible.
Bob Bryan cited two other key players who helped get the new doubles deal done - one a usual suspect, the other anything but. Etienne de Villiers, the new ATP CEO, was a key player in bringing peace to the valley. As we at Tennis learned during his visit to our offices last week, de Villiers is a pragmatist and open-minded executive who doesn’t bring significant prejudices and predispositions to the job. His approach was simple: Doubles players unhappy? What can we do to make them happy without harming some other segment of the game?
“Etienne was the guy on their side who really turned it,” Bob said. “He came to the table asking, ‘what can we do to help the game?'.”
The unusual suspect was Roger Federer. The Mighty Fed apparently sat in on a bunch of meetings, and the Bryans (among others) were very impressed by his contribution to the debate. “A lot of Number One players, they steer clear of the politics,” Bob said. “Roger showed us he was really interested in helping the sport, because doubles isn’t just some luxury. It’s part of the sport.”
So here’s the million dollar question: If the statistics show that no-ad and traditional scoring produce virtually identical results (as well as rankings, etc.) would Federer go along with best-of-three, no-ad, super-tiebreaker singles, knowing that the altered scoring system has so many advantages?
Absolutely, positively, definitely. . . not.
Federer’s position apparently is that, at least on reasonably fast surfaces, traditional scoring ensures that a player still has a good chance of winning a game even if he’s down, love-40. It's a condition he doesn't want to sacrifice.
Of course, the obverse is also true; with no-ad scoring, a player has that more of a chance of winning if he’s up 40-love.
But nobody felt like pressing that point on Roger. At least not yet.