By Chris Oddo | Tuesday November 6, 2018
The Next Gen ATP Finals began on Tuesday in Milan, and once again this intriguing event is finding ways to captivate.
Last year in its inaugural season, the event introduced a myriad of innovations that ranged from live headset coaching session to no-let serves -- there was even a new scoring format that featured sets with tiebreakers at 3-3.
This year the event has bolstered its reputation as an innovator by adding towel racks at the back of the courts to unburden ball kids from that icky responsibility; they have also initiated video review on potential disputes surrounding double-bounces, net-touches and double-hits--something that die-hard fans have wanted for many years.
Clear away all the new-fangled experimentation and there’s tennis to be had as well.
Stefanos Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev, Frances Tiafoe and Alex de Minaur all came away with wins on Tuesday to move to the top of the standings of their respective groups, even if each struggled at times to process the dizzying pace of shortened sets with no-ad scoring—essentially sets that can end faster than the time it takes to walk to the back of the court to pick up the towel used to dry off between points.
The stress was evident in the days first match as Tsitsipas, the tournament's highest-ranked player, started fast against Jaume Munar of Spain but quickly seemed to lose the plot as his disposition shifted from intense and eager to dark and stormy. After he completed his four-set victory over Munar, Tsitsipas spoke on court about the palpable stress he felt as he tried to process the new set of rules while trying to maintain his focus.
“I believe it’s a bit more stressful than playing normal sets,” he said. “The focus needs to be higher than usual. … everything happens faster.”
Tsitsipas always said that he didn’t enjoy having to go and grab his own towel between points when he wanted to towel off.
“It was a bit tough to deal with it.”
Fans have long clamored for the tour to stop making ball kids, often children, handle players sweaty towels, both for hygienic reasons and because the ritual of drying off between points has become ubiquitous among players and is seen as an unnecessary tactic that slows down play.
Today in Milan players went for the towel far less, simply because it was a difficult chore to accomplish with a 25-second serve clock in play.
Russia's Rublev, the only player with any previous Next Gen Finals experience under his belt, followed Tsitsipas with a victory over Taylor Fritz in an entertaining five-setter.
Though the quality of tennis was high, the headset coaching moments might have taken the cake, with Fritz telling his coach David Nainkin at one point that he hopes somebody cleans the headset after his match because he was perspiring all over the cans.
The night session featured a tremendous display of shotmaking from America's Tiafoe, who took out Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz in four sets, winning a 22-point, 11-minute tiebreaker to finish it off.
Alex de Minaur, the youngest player in the competition, finished off the day brilliantly with a 55-minute beatdown of Italian wild card Liam Caruana. The Italian won a wild card play-in tournament to book his spot in the draw but appeared to be in over his head against the speedy Aussie--the Rome native ranks at 622.