Doubles Dilemma: The Fight Is On

By Richard Osborn

When the world’s top doubles players — a group of 45 specialists led by Bob and Mike Bryan, Mark Knowles, Mahesh Bhupathi and Graydon Oliver — filed an antitrust lawsuit in Houston on Sept. 1 aimed at stopping doubles “enhancements” the ATP planned to institute following the U.S. Open, it was clear that the folks in Ponte Vedre were in for a fight.

The plaintiffs claimed that the proposed changes made little or no sense and that former ATP CEO Mark Miles and the ATP’s six-member Board of Directors were simply trying to squeeze them out. They claimed their livelihood was at stake. The ATP has countered that the moves — which include significant alterations to the current scoring and ranking systems — will better showcase the game and pull the game’s marquee singles players into the mix.

Although the ATP initially appeared to backpedal on the issue, saying that the moves were strictly “experimental” and that they were “interactive, collaborative and open,” several of the scoring changes (sets played to five games, tiebreaks at 4-4, 5-5, etc.) did kick in at a string of post-U.S. Open events, including Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Metz, Tokyo, Vienna, Stockholm and Moscow.

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“There wasn’t much positive feedback from it,” said Canadian Daniel Nestor. “There’s too much luck involved when the match is so short and when you’re playing with the scoring like this. We just feel doubles can be promoted a lot better, differently than singles. It’s a different skill set. We feel if the tour makes an effort to promote us better, everyone is going to reap the rewards.”

Even ProServ founder Donald Dell, now Senior VP of SFX Sports, weighed in on the subject: “It’s a serious mistake of judgment to change rather dramatically the scoring system of doubles on the ATP Tour. First, it’s very confusing to the public to have a different scoring system for doubles, apart from singles.”

On Oct. 4, organizers of the Masters Series Madrid announced that they would eliminate the doubles draws if the antitrust lawsuit was not resolved by the start of the tournament (and, ironically, donate 50 percent of the doubles prize money to the ATP Player’s Retirement Plan).

“We believe that the ATP’s new rules will help doubles grow and take this great competition out of the dark hole it’s in,” said Gerard Tsobanian, GM of the Masters Series Madrid. “Doubles matches around the world go on unnoticed, attracting very small crowds. By making it more accessible to top singles players, with a new format and short matches, we feel that this competition will become more attractive. We consider that the lawsuit filed by these 45 doubles players makes no sense.”

But the ATP was quick to respond, saying they were “unaware of the Masters Series Madrid’s decision...Irrespective of the tournament’s motivation, they have been advised that they are not in a position to unilaterally make such changes.”

The two groups recently sat down at a bargaining table in New York. On one side was Oliver, Wayne Bryan (father to Mike and Bob and the doubles group’s unofficial spokesman) and Houston-based attorney John Sullivan. On the other was ATP CFO/Interim COO Flip Galloway, General Counsel Mark Young and lead attorney Brad Ruskin. Although details from the meeting — which reportedly ran nearly four hours — were not immediately disclosed, Wayne Bryan said he was encouraged by the progress.

“I have all good will toward the ATP, toward the other side,” he told IT. “I fully expect to get this thing solved. When I look at the ATP website and see two pictures — one of [Rafael] Nadal’s biceps and one of Knowles and Nestor winning Madrid and both lunging for a volley down the middle — I think, that’s good for tennis. We don’t enjoy this process, but we feel a good result will come that will be beneficial to tennis. We want the tournaments to be better. We want to be solvent. We want more fans, more sponsors, more media. That’s our dream.”

San Jose tournament director Bill Rapp, who has also been involved in talks with the doubles players, believes that the ATP — under the direction of new CEO Etienne de Villiers — can come up with a settlement that will be beneficial to both sides. However, Rapp and other TDs have said that the doubles players may have to make substantial financial concessions in order to do so.

De Villiers recently told the Times of London, “What I want to do is talk to these guys about implementing change in a measured way, because that is how problems are solved in business...Doubles is like water; it has to find its own level. We have to discover what will make it a more attractive proposition for everyone, because if you have a product that’s not desirable, obviously you have to improve it. The process the ATP went through before the current changes was not perfect. Equally, it is totally inappropriate to talk about removing doubles from the ATP Tour. But we have to make it better.”