As we come down the stretch run of the 2012 French Open, the debate over the length of Grand Slam tennis matches has once again come to the surface. Men and women receive equal prize money, yet the men play best-of-five matches and the women only play two-out-of-three. That's tradition. That's what it's always been. But some people want to change it. ESPN.com's LZ Granderson dedicated an entire column to it recently.
I kind of understand the argument being made by Granderson and others. Their feeling is that women are definitely capable of playing five sets, so give them the opportunity. I don't disagree. Women are certainly just as capable of playing best-of-five matches as men are. In fact, in the years the WTA Championships were held annually at Madison Square Garden, there was a best-of-five final. But that's not really the point.
There's another factor at play here that's not being considered: the length of matches. Using the conservative estimate of 45 minutes per set, it takes roughly two hours and 15 minutes to play three sets (which is the minimum length of a men's Grand Slam match). Add another hour and a half to that, and you've got five-set matches lasting between 3:30-3:45. Obviously the ones that cross the four-hour threshold are the epics. Using that same formula, a two-set women's match will be over in roughly an hour and a half. There are obvious extremes on both ends of the spectrum (the 6-0, 6-1 whitewashing that takes less than an hour; Isner-Mahut), but for the most part, these averages are pretty accurate.
Now consider the tournament organizers that have to schedule 254 singles matches over the two-week duration of the event. Not to mention all the doubles, juniors, seniors and wheelchair matches. Plus practice times. Again using my average match time, you figure that at the very least it'll take six hours to complete four matches on a given court. At the US or Australian Open, the courts have lights, so matches going long isn't really an issue. But at the French Open and Wimbledon, they've got to stop when they're out of natural light. That's usually around 8:30-9:00. Matches that aren't done by then have to be suspended and sandwiched between two other matches on the next day's schedule. And that's not even taking rain delays into account.
I do have a point here, I promise. Let's take a typical day at the US Open as our example. The day session on Arthur Ashe Stadium consists of three matches starting at 11:00, then the night session featuring two matches starts at 7:30. More often than not, the day session runs long (sometimes until after 8:00), pushing back the start of the night matches. And this is with the women playing best-of-three and final set tiebreakers!
At each of the other three Grand Slams, they play out the final set until somebody breaks serve. That's how you get a 12-hour Isner-Mahut match. And that's why the women also playing best-of-five would never work. Especially when you're playing out the final set (which can take forever in its own right), you can't add two more sets to women's matches and still expect to get every match scheduled for every court completed that day.
Of course, you could get around this by scheduling fewer matches on each court, but there are obvious problems with that plan. The first is that you'd then need more courts to still play the same number of matches each day. These are the four greatest tennis facilities in the world, but even they don't have the court space to accomodate that. Besides, that also means you'd have top players on the outer courts more frequently. It would be great for the fans who can't afford stadium tickets to get to see the top players, but what about the ones who bought tickets for the show courts? Especially since Andy Murray's not playing anywhere other than Centre Court at Wimbledon and the Andy Roddick/Williams Sisters US Open night sessions probably aren't going anywhere too soon, either.
As weird as it is to see the top players on the outer courts, it's also incredibly unfair to them. You try explaining to Novak Djokovic that he has to play on Court 2 in front of 800 people without replay (or TV cameras) because the women are playing five sets now and they could only schedule three matches on the stadium. That sounds ridiculous. Yet, it would be the reality if the women also played best-of-five at the Grand Slams.
Sure, it would be incredibly exciting to see 15 sets over the course of three matches, but the women's game hasn't lost anything by playing two fewer sets. In fact, they've got more of a sense of urgency. Does Serena Williams lose in the first round last week if the match is best-of-five? Probably not. Instead, we got a tremendous upset. I agree that those comebacks from 2-0 down that can only happen on the men's side are extraordinary. But you can't tell me that every five-set men's match is a classic. Just like you can't tell me that, three sets or not, there haven't been any classic women's Grand Slam matches.
While it would be cool to see the women play best-of-five, it's completely unnecessary. But more importantly, it would never work.
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