Juan Sebastián Cabal and Robert Farah became stars this season when they won Wimbledon and the United States Open. But for the Colombian doubles team, which leads the field at the Nitto ATP Finals in London starting on Sunday, stardom is relative. While the men’s and women’s doubles tours are experiencing something of a boom — in quality of play, in availability of coverage, and in prize money — they remain largely lost in the shadows of the singles game.
Recreationally, more people play doubles. Yet, for a half-century, singles has received outsize attention from the tours, networks and sponsors, said Ross Hutchins, the chief player officer for the ATP, who won five ATP doubles titles during his playing career.
Casual tennis fans have most likely heard of Mike and Bob Bryan, the 41-year-old twins who have won 16 Grand Slams together and four of these year-end championships. But they are the exception.
Betthanie Mattek-Sands, winner of five women’s doubles Grand Slam titles, points out that while WTA Finals competitors in Shenzhen, China, last week played for a record $1 million prize, the singles prize money has gone up proportionally — and that the marketing and coverage continue to skew toward singles.
“That’s not acceptable to me,” Mattek-Sands said. “People pay attention to singles just because this is how it’s been done. Doubles has great entertainment value, but it hasn’t been given a chance.”
Pam Shriver, an ESPN analyst and winner of 21 doubles Grand Slam tournaments, said the lack of recognition for doubles was set at the start of the Open era, when no one lobbied on behalf of doubles players. Tournaments give 75 to 80 percent of the purse to singles players, so that attracted the biggest stars. “It was a missed opportunity,” she said.
Originally, there was not much prize money, so the game’s elite played plenty of doubles to earn more: Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe and especially John McEnroe won multiple doubles Grand Slams, as did Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.
“Martina used to win all three, including mixed doubles,” said Tracy Austin, a former player who is an analyst on the Tennis Channel. “Then the money changed and it was not worth the fatigue during a tournament and the wear and tear on your body for the top 10 to 15 singles players.”
Doubles faded in the public’s mind in the 1990s, although the star power of the Williams sisters and the dominance of the Bryans restored a little luster in the 2000s. Still, it was a tough sell.
But Jamie Murray, winner of seven doubles Grand Slam titles, said the game’s popularity had grown during his career. “It used to be that fans would just stumble upon our matches, but now they are seeking doubles matches at the ATP tournaments and the Grand Slams,” he said.
Doubles is more exciting than it was 20 years ago because of the advances in strings and rackets that allow for more spin and pace. “It’s not pure serve-and-volley anymore, you have to be extremely strategic,” Austin said. “There are a lot of exciting points and they are more unpredictable.”
Rules changes by the ATP and WTA also have boosted the appeal of doubles. Outside the Grand Slams, doubles matches feature no-ad scoring — at deuce, the next point decides the game — and a 10-point super tiebreaker instead of a third set. “Every point is huge, which is exciting for the fans,” Austin said.
While Cabal and Farah won two Grand Slams this year, they have been less dominant in tournaments with no-ad scoring (like the ATP Finals). They’ve won 63 percent of their no-ad deuce service games and just 33 percent of their return deuce games. By contrast, Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo won 68 percent and 44 percent.
Hutchins said the no-ad change was crucial because breaking serve was more difficult in doubles. The average match is now 75 minutes instead of two hours or more, he said, making it easier to schedule for TV and the tours and more likely to draw singles players back to doubles. The Paris Masters doubles draw last week included Stefanos Tsitsipas, John Isner, Fabio Fognini, Sam Querrey, Karen Khachanov, Andrey Rublev, Alex de Minaur and Taylor Fritz.
Singles stars still help grab headlines, Shriver said, citing the biggest doubles moments of the past year: Roger Federer playing mixed doubles against Serena Williams in the Hopman Cup; Williams partnering with Andy Murray at Wimbledon as part of his post-surgery comeback; the 15-year-old sensation Coco Gauff and Caty McNally, 17, packing the stands at the U.S. Open; and Federer partnering with both Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev at the Laver Cup.
But Jamie Murray credits the ATP with doing more to promote doubles. Changing technology has helped. Hutchins said more digital channels, plus the tour website and social media made it easier to highlight doubles matches and players even when the major networks focused on singles.
ATP’s Tennis TV offers extensive streaming coverage, and with the tour covering every Masters 1000 doubles match and some 500 matches, it can provide those feeds to networks worldwide for their digital channels. WTA Media added 500 doubles matches from 2017 to 2018, and in 2019 the WTA launched new sharing tools for its digital content, which increased by 150 percent.
“Three years ago, we had none of this coverage,” Hutchins said, adding that most networks at least carry matches featuring their home country’s players.
Murray said, “Sky Sports now can show all my matches, where it used to be British audiences that wanted to watch me play had only two random singles guys on TV.”
He said the tournaments still tended to neglect doubles, in scheduling and prize money, though Hutchins said the money split would not change. “I think it’s less about prize money and more about the ATP driving awareness and telling the players’ stories and showing how good they are,” he added.
The ATP also is experimenting with rules and incentives to encourage doubles teams to stay together longer, knowing that is the best way to build a fan base. For instance, if a team finishes in the top 13 and stays together, then the next year they are guaranteed entry into the first five Masters 1000s, no matter their rankings.
Shriver and Mattek-Sands said even more creative efforts would help. Shriver suggested that the tours find sponsors that promote longevity — cars, batteries or vitamins — to create bonuses for playing and winning the most tournaments over two or even four years.
Mattek-Sands said she would like doubles-specific sponsors and special “doubles days” at tournaments to help promote the game. “We need to think outside the box,” she said. (Outside the box, of course, is where the doubles alleys are.)
As for this year’s ATP Finals, Hutchins said Cabal and Farah were the favorite team, but he, Austin, Shriver and Murray agreed that it was wide open. The field includes six teams with Grand Slam crowns (Cabal/Farah, Pierre-Hugues Herbert/Nicolas Mahut, winners of this year’s Australian Open; Kevin Krawietz/Andreas Mies, who won the 2019 French Open; Kubot/Melo, Jean-Julien Rojer/Horia Tecau, and the Bryans); and one has a player who won with another partner (Michael Venus, now playing with Raven Klaasen).
“Everyone can beat everyone on their day,” said Murray, who will not qualify because he switched partners midseason and his points with each partner (Bruno Soares, then Neal Skupski) count separately.
“It gives me extra motivation for next year,” Murray said.
“The ATP Finals is a great platform because each session is one singles and one doubles match, so in a way we are on par with singles there.”
Source: Tennis - nytimes.com
