The Women Have Their Say on a Best-of-5 Set Format

With the Australian Open now well and truly in the tennis rearview mirror, there is one topic that is still on everybody’s mind. Craig Tiley, the Tennis Australia and AO boss, flagged the idea of women playing best-of-5 sets from the quarter-finals onwards next year.

“One of the things I’ve been saying now is that I think there should be three out of five sets for women. We should look at the last few matches — the quarters and the semis and the finals — and make the women’s side three out of five.

So it’s something we should put on the agenda and start talking to the players about it because there’s some matches in those last rounds which would have been fascinating had they been three out of five sets.

Now I don’t know whether the players would want to do it or not, but it is something we need to consider on the women’s side.”

Tiley would’ve got a pretty good idea of what the players think of it in Doha this week. Before the tournament, five of the top 10 women in the world were asked their opinion on the matter. It’s fair to say the responses were unanimous.

JASMINE PAOLINI: “At the moment I don’t think it’s a good idea. Honestly, to me, maybe it’s better to reduce the sets of the men until the quarter-finals. I’m not sure. I think also some good matches are of course in the best-of-five, but it’s a tough tournament. We could see also in the men that the Australian Open was tough for them. Maybe from the quarter-finals on would be a nice idea.

But to the woman, I don’t think it’s a good idea, honestly, to me. I mean, we are built different physically. So if the men had a tricky tournament physically, for us we are different physically, so it’s going to be, I mean, it’s tougher. It’s not a lie. We’re just built different.”

IGA SWIATEK: “I think with the world right now that is kind of, speeding up, I don’t really think it makes sense for us to play such long matches. Especially when I think it would be tough to keep the quality up throughout the whole match.

But if you ask specifically to my game, I consider myself one of the players that is like kind of tough in coping with endurance and longer matches. I think maybe I would have some advantage. Honestly, I’ve never played such a long match, so I have no idea how my body would react. I think also the whole season would change, because we would need to plan everything differently and prepare for these long, long matches. There would, for sure, be many, many more questions about the scheduling then.”

ELENA RYBAKINA: “I would like to stick to three sets. Five, I think it’s quite a lot. I’m not sure that the quality of the matches would be as good. But again, I don’t know how much players will have a voice on who is going to decide all this, but I think it’s quite difficult.

COCO GAUFF: “I mean, could I play best-of-five sets? Probably, yes. Do I want to? I mean, it’s a lot of playing. I don’t know. I feel like, from a spectator’s standpoint, it would be just too much for the men and women to play best-of-five. I mean, the matches are already going long, imagine if the women were also doing best-of-five sets.

I guess my stance is whatever. Like I feel like if you’re going to best-of-five, like the whole tournament should be best-of-five. It shouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, we’re going to start best-of-five in the quarters.’ I think for me that feels, I don’t want to say stupid, because that’s a big word. But I feel like the rules of the tournament should be consistent throughout the whole tournament.

I don’t know. I like the way two out of three is. I think best-of-five wouldn’t be terrible, but I don’t know. I feel indifferent towards the question, honestly. I like the way it is right now. Two out of three feels right. I can be home at a good time. I feel like best-of-five we’re going to be out there until 5:00 a.m. like every day.”

AMANDA ANISIMOVA: “I mean, we’ve always played best-of-three, so I feel like that would be a crazy change for us. Also very physical on a woman’s body. So, yeah, I prefer to obviously play three sets, for sure.

So there you have it Craig. If you are going to implement it with the consultation of the players, it doesn’t appear like anything is going to change in the short term. The ATP Masters events used to play the final as best-of-5, so maybe that could be the compromise. For now though, best-of 3 seems here to stay.

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