A former No. 1 criticizes Djokovic and his proposal to change tennis: "It's absurd"
Novak Djokovic was very brave in publicly expressing his ideas for tennis to adapt to new generations. A proposal that has continuously faced criticism from other legends.
Novak Djokovic has opened up a debate that promises to accompany us for a long time. The Serbian recently proposed a profound modification to the scoring system of matches with the aim of making them shorter and more predictable, an idea that has already found detractors among some authoritative voices in the sport.
The latest, and particularly forceful, voice has been that of Yevgeny Kafelnikov. The former world number one from Russia did not mince words in evaluating Djokovic's proposal: “It's absurd! It's nonsense you can't even imagine,” he stated on the show Hardcourt, aired on the First&Red channel.
Djokovic's proposal includes reducing the sets from the current six games to four, considering the possibility of eliminating advantages at 40-40, and maintaining the best of five sets format, but within an approximate duration of two hours. The goal of the 24-time Grand Slam winner is to adapt tennis to new consumption habits and achieve matches with a more controllable duration. A transformation that, however, threatens to alter some of the elements that have historically defined the identity of the sport.
Kafelnikov believes that the problem is not that tennis needs to evolve, but rather what is willing to be sacrificed to make it faster. The Russian, a champion of Roland Garros and the Australian Open, thinks that reducing matches in this way would touch an essential part of the competition. “If this happens, I will be completely disappointed with tennis,” he concluded.
The discussion actually goes far beyond four or six games. Djokovic starts from a comprehensible concern: long matches can be difficult to fit into a television landscape increasingly accustomed to brief formats and predictable time slots. But Kafelnikov's response raises the opposite question: what happens if, in making tennis easier to consume, we end up eliminating precisely what makes it special?
A question without an easy solution
The debate has already found other critical voices. Julien Benneteau also expressed his opposition to the proposal and questioned the idea of turning matches into encounters of practically predetermined duration. “Sets of fifteen minutes? Is that really what we want?” the Frenchman posed, arguing that tennis needs to preserve the drama that leads to the decisive moments of each set.
Djokovic's proposal has forced tennis to ask itself what it wants to be in the future. The Serbian suggests adapting to new times, but Kafelnikov fears that this adaptation will end up distorting the sport. Which side are you on?
This is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, Un ex Nº1 carga contra Djokovic y su propuesta para cambiar el tenis: “Es absurdo”