The men's tennis tour has decided to end its experiment with a round-robin system at some of its tournaments.
The format was severely criticised by some of tennis's top players, including world number one Roger Federer.

The system also ran into trouble at the Las Vegas Open when there was confusion over who should qualify when a player withdrew injured from a match.

"Remaining events who had volunteered for the round-robin format will revert to knock-out," an ATP statement said.
Well it's the news you've all been waiting for :D


"The ATP had begun testing several versions of the format at lower level events this year following initial research that indicated it could be a measure to provide significant growth to the game.

"The research showed it was popular among casual fans.

"However, the carefully monitored testing at the five test case events this year raised a number of concerns and weaknesses that were not apparent from desk research.

"Firstly, the 32 hybrid format caused confusion; second, resolving who would progress from the round robin stage with three-men groups was often complicated; and third, sections of the media had difficulty in reporting round-robin and consequently fans not at the event had difficultly in following early results.

"Finally, and significantly, no format or rule could address the overwhelming player concern that their destiny was not in their own hands as a result of dead matches or withdrawals."

Thank the Lord! roflmao

It was badly organised, badly structured and far too confusing for any fans tbh. Good riddance RR :lol:

My problem is that the ATP seemed to think it was a good idea becasue "....research showed it was popular among casual fans."

They are CASUAL fans - they don't go to many matches or buy things from the sponsors. So why try to pander to them?

Translation:

The absolute debacles that ensued have finally caused us to remove our thumbs from our collective ****** . . .

Good stuff :ok:

Good riddance.

:yahoo:

:bigwave:

:yahoo:

:yahoo:

This is great news :D

Because casual fans can turn into what you might term 'real' fans, who do go to matches and buy things from sponsors. If the sport only panders to current fans, how does the sport grow? Casual fans also make up a large part of TV audiences for Grand Slams and other televised events, so the revenues from selling these events around the world would suffer if casual fans were not catered for. Loss of revenue from television usually reflects in loss of funds at grass roots level, because the governing bodies of sports in various countries rely quite heavily on revenue from their televised events and base their funding allocation to state/regional bodies based on their income.
That said, glad to see the RR format go. Perhaps the sport needs to find other ways to pander to casual fans.

I quite liked the fact that if my fave player lost his first match, he still had the potential to win the tournament :shrug:















only kidding :P This was the worse thing the atp did since testing Rusedski positive for drugs

:yahoo:

Was so pleased when I saw this news on teletext :yahoo: What a result!! I thought that RR would be stopped but I didn't think it would be so soon -fantastic!! The right decision 100%, I'm glad that they have seen sense :clap:

Although I agree with the basics of this - the rabid fans tend to be more set in their ways, you can't just make changes because you hope casual fans will become more solid. You need to first understand 1) will it change their behaviour and 2) will it drive away non-casual fans or make them casual and then compare the two to determine the risk of action/non-action.

It seems like the ATP just looked at the casual fans for this and thought it would bring more of them to a match and the rest will just 'suck it up' because they want tennis - or they will like the fact their fav might last longer than round 1 or 2 even if they have a bad day. They didn't really seem to do a proper study of it to see the true fan impact or, if they did, they need to fire that firm for doing a crummy job. :D

Yeah, good point - I think it was just bad research prior to introducing the new format, but I don't disagree with looking at changes to make the sport more appealing. I don't think there was much opposition to trying the RR format before it was introduced, was there? I seem to remember most people looking on with interest and only really turning against the idea after it was introduced (and was messy). The general thought seemed to be that the Masters Cup worked well, so the idea could be expanded.
Any thoughts on changes that could have a positive impact on the game without the risk of turning away the existing fan base? It's a tough one....
I like the idea of smaller draws and larger qualifying competitions (for which round robins could possibly be used!) and televising the final rounds of qualifying. Those guys fight for their lives and get stuck into each other - good value for the casual fan as well as the hardened fans, although qualifying may not be of interest to people because they are not big name players. :shrug: