Whilst viewers of Channel Nines: "One night with Federer and Hewitt", slammed the coverage as frustrating, due to strange camera angles and breaks in audio, I'm going to put all of that aside. Instead, I am going to concentrate on accessing the "Fast 4 Tennis" concept and how it faired on Monday night.
It seems that Fast 4 Tennis is another way for sporting organisers to appease our ever increasingly short attention span. We have shortened forms of Rugby and Cricket, so why not tennis?
The problem with Fast 4 Tennis is that it doesn't actually change the way that the sport is played. In Rugby's shortened version Rugby Sevens, there are less players on the field, thus creating a more open, fast-paced match with a lot of more tries. In cricket's shortened form, 20-20 cricket, the game is changed by the limited over format forcing players to go for bigger and more exciting shots because they have less time to make a big score.
Fast 4 Tennis is still just tennis...the only difference is that the sets were over quicker.
My second problem with shortening the game of tennis is that there already is a shorter version of the game, it's called a best of three set match. Hewitt and Federer's five-set match went for about an hour and a half, which not surprisingly, is about how long standard best of three-set match will last. Therefore, it defeated the purpose of having a faster paced style of the game.
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| Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt - Source: Zimbio |
There are a couple of other differences in Fast 4 Tennis to the regular tennis match. There is the first to five-point tiebreaker, no ads scoring and lets are in play. I'm may be starting to sounds like a negative neddy, however I'm not a fan of the first two concepts so I'll concentrate on the latter. I really like the idea of lets being in play, they're in play during the rally, so why not during the serve as well? I think lets hold up the flow of the game and I think all formats of tennis should adopt this rule
The thing that made "One night with Federer and Hewitt" so great was the players. Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt are undoubtedly amazing entertainers, but they also have great chemistry together whenever they play. The other thing that made the tennis so entertaining is the fact that it was an exhibition, I want to highlight that point. There is no way Federer and Hewitt would be playing the same style of tennis in the fourth round of the Australian Open with everything on the line.
They both played without inhibitions, they played with style and flair but it wasn't the format that encouraged this play.
"Fast 4 Tennis is still just tennis..."
One night with Federer and Hewitt can be considered a success, the ratings were good and it certainly was entertaining. I put this down to the players on court and not the format, Fast 4 Tennis seemed pointless and unoriginal. No advantage scoring and lets in play are not exactly new or revolutionary ideas, they have been around for a long time.
If organisers really want to increase the pace of tennis, and shorten the game, than the rule changes will need to be a lot more inspired then Fast 4 Tennis.
So in homage to "That Movie Guy" Marc Fennell, I give Fast 4 Tennis 2 out of 5 awkward camera angles.
