FanShot

NCAA Tennis Rules Update: The World is Not Ending

+

On Tuesday, I spoke about proposed changes to the structure of the NCAA Tennis Championship that had the college tennis world up in arms. The most controversial parts of the plan were changing the third set to a 10-game "super tiebreak" and shortening doubles matches from 8 games to 6. Last night, it was announced that this part of the plan will not be adopted after all. As the Daily Progress's Whitey Reid discusses in the linked article, it seems that the loud and united reaction against the plan was what made the Committee reconsider. This reminds me of discussions last year about extending the field of the NCAA Basketball Tournament to 96 teams; information about the plan was leaked, public reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and the plan was dropped in favor of adding just 4 teams. Likewise, the NCAA will make some minor (and more welcome) changes to streamline the tennis championship. For example, they expect to: • Remove the warm-up with the opponent before singles and doubles; • Reduce the time between singles and doubles to five minutes (currently 10); and • Shorten each changeover from 90 seconds to 60. Fine with me! Full release here.