{"id":1337,"date":"2013-09-17T16:00:18","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T20:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=1337"},"modified":"2013-09-17T16:00:18","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T20:00:18","slug":"time-saving-shenanigans-and-the-effect-of-no-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/17\/time-saving-shenanigans-and-the-effect-of-no-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"Time-Saving Shenanigans and the Effect of No-Ad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Colette Lewis <a href=\"http:\/\/tenniskalamazoo.blogspot.com\/2013\/09\/another-stab-at-college-tennis-format.html\">reported<\/a> on another set of possible rule changes for college tennis. \u00a0The goals, as always, are to shorten matches, increase television coverage, and systematically ignore the well-informed preferences of those most closely involved with the game.<\/p>\n<p>Colette does a better job of explaining the limitations of the proposed format than I would, so I encourage you to go <a href=\"http:\/\/tenniskalamazoo.blogspot.com\/2013\/09\/another-stab-at-college-tennis-format.html\">read her post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So that we&#8217;re all on the same page, let&#8217;s summarize the most recent dual-match format:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dual matches&#8211;meetings between two schools&#8211;have six players to a side. There are three doubles and six singles matches. \u00a0The combined results of the doubles matches is worth one point, and every singles match is worth one point, for a total of seven. \u00a0The first school to four points wins.<\/li>\n<li>First, three doubles matches are played simultaneously. \u00a0Each is a single set, first to seven, win by two, and a tiebreak is played at 8-8. \u00a0If one school wins two of the three doubles matches while the other is still in progress, the third is abandoned.<\/li>\n<li>Next, all six singles matches are played simultaneously. \u00a0Each singles match is best of three tiebreak sets. \u00a0Once one school has accumulated four points (including the doubles point), the remaining matches are abandoned, and the contest is over.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And here&#8217;s the new version:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Singles first. \u00a0The singles format stays the same, with six simultaneous matches.<\/li>\n<li>If and only if a team does not accumulate four points in the singles, a compressed version of the doubles is played: the three doubles matches are reduced to 10-point super-tiebreaks. (This time last year, we were debating <a href=\"http:\/\/tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/20\/the-implications-of-the-10-point-tiebreak\/\">the merits of those<\/a> as\u00a0<em>third<\/em> sets.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The proposed alternative would certainly save time. \u00a0It would also effectively destroy doubles as an important part of college tennis.<\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/interactive-bracket\/tennis-men\/d1\">last year&#8217;s NCAA Men&#8217;s Team Championships<\/a>, 44 of the 63 dual matches were decided by a score of 4-0 or 4-1. \u00a0While it&#8217;s impossible to know how the abandoned singles matches would have turned out, it&#8217;s safe to assume that almost all of those meetings&#8211;along with many of the 4-2 outcomes and a few of the 4-3&#8217;s&#8211;would have been decided before any doubles was necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Since length is such an important part of these debates, I ran some numbers to see what else might be done.<\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><strong>No-ad, no-overtime<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The most popular device for speeding up tennis is &#8220;no-ad&#8221; scoring. \u00a0You&#8217;re probably familiar with it, as both the ATP and WTA tours use it for doubles. \u00a0Once a game reaches 40-40, the receiving team decides whether to play a final point in the deuce or ad court, and the outcome of that point decides the game.<\/p>\n<p>So, how much time does it save?\u00a0To get a rough idea of the answer, I looked at roughly 3600 ATP Challenger singles matches from this year. \u00a0(It&#8217;s not the most relevant dataset, I realize, but better &#8220;available&#8221; than &#8220;ideal.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>In those matches, 24.2% of games went to deuce. \u00a0Those games averaged 9.7 points each, meaning that a switch to the no-ad format would save 2.7 points per deuce game. \u00a0Overall, such a change would save about 0.65 points per game across the board. \u00a0The average best-of-three-sets match lasts about 22 games, so switching to no-ad scoring would reduce the number of points in the typical match by 14 or 15.<\/p>\n<p>At the ATP level, each additional point within a game&#8211;that is, one that doesn&#8217;t add to the number of changeovers or set breaks&#8211;adds about 33 seconds to the length of the match. \u00a0So the switch to no-ad scoring would shorten the length of an average match by about eight minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Switching doubles to no-ad would have a lesser effect, because the matches are already shorter. \u00a0Figuring an average match length of 10 to 12 games, that&#8217;s another four minutes saved.<\/p>\n<p>The impact is a bit more ambiguous than I&#8217;ve made it out to be, because no-ad scoring makes service breaks more common. \u00a0If the server has a 65% chance of winning a point (typical for male tour pros), he or she has only a 65% chance of holding from deuce in the no-ad format. \u00a0The server&#8217;s chances might be a bit worse, assuming the returner chooses the side which favors him or her. \u00a0In an ad game, that same server has a 77.5% chance of holding from deuce.<\/p>\n<p>It would take a much more in-depth simulation (informed by much more college-specific assumptions) to know the impact of that difference. \u00a0Some additional breaks would speed up matches, making 6-0 and 6-1 outcomes more likely, while others would push sets to tiebreaks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But college tennis takes longer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So far, I&#8217;ve been forced to use numbers from the pros to evaluate proposals for collegiates. \u00a0Somewhere along the line, the numbers don&#8217;t add up.<\/p>\n<p>According to the advisory group responsible for the &#8220;hide-doubles-in-the-attic&#8221; proposal, the average dual match time at last year&#8217;s NCAA championships was over three and a half hours. \u00a0What&#8217;s taking so long?<\/p>\n<p>On the ATP tour, the average best-of-three match is just over 90 minutes. \u00a0Doubles generally moves more quickly, so the first-to-seven matches should be less than half as long. \u00a0Plus, since dual matches are often decided while the longest singles matches are still going, the average\u00a0<em>completed<\/em> match must be shorter than the average match at the college level.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, even accounting for less serve dominance, longer rallies, and assorted factors such as the absence of ballkids and the higher number of lets (remember, these matches are played on adjacent courts), how are we getting so far beyond the magic three-hour time frame?<\/p>\n<p>One explanation is simply poor data collection and analysis. \u00a0The numbers the advisory group cites are from last year&#8217;s team championships, a particularly small sample. \u00a0And by using an average, and not a median, one or two very long matches can skew the numbers&#8211;especially with such a small sample. \u00a0The five-hour dual matches are surely beyond saving, so why give them so much weight?<\/p>\n<p>An alternative explanation is that college tennis really is that much slower, in which case many of the numbers I cited above don&#8217;t tell the whole story. \u00a0Are there far more deuce games in college than the 24.2% on the Challenger tour? \u00a0Are interminable, 15- to 20-point deuce games much more common? \u00a0Do points take considerably longer?<\/p>\n<p>If so, the effect of moving to no-ad scoring would be greater than the twelve-minute conclusion I reached above. \u00a0Twelve minutes is a little less than one-tenth of my estimate for equivalent ATP matches, assuming a 90-minute average singles match and 45 minutes for doubles. \u00a0So if dual matches are really lasting three hours and 40 minutes, the equivalent time reduction would be almost double&#8211;better than 20 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Purists may hate no-ad scoring, but given a choice between losing 15-point deuce games and losing college doubles, I&#8217;d ditch dramatic deuce games in a second.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, Colette Lewis reported on another set of possible rule changes for college tennis. \u00a0The goals, as always, are to shorten matches, increase television coverage, and systematically ignore the well-informed preferences of those most closely involved with the game. Colette does a better job of explaining the limitations of the proposed format than I would, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/17\/time-saving-shenanigans-and-the-effect-of-no-ad\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Time-Saving Shenanigans and the Effect of No-Ad<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college-tennis","category-the-rules"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}