The heading does not want to be a critique to the tournament – well, I wouldn’t call Next Gen a tournament, but more a mega exhibition: to the contrary, this Next Gen event wanted to be artificial from the beginning, it had to be so and it resulted as such.
I attended only the final, and I want to be real quick on the match, since I assume that everybody can read about it basically everywhere: indeed there was much coverage on this event, and this is already a positive fact. Anyway, the final was played between Chung and Rublev; Chung won in 4 sets and the score was 3-4, 4-3, 4-2, 4-2. The match was quite boring, overall: I still don’t like men’s tennis. The two players played throughout the match the same kind of tennis, point after point. The only exception materialised during the last couple of games, in which Rublev, driven mad by his steady opponent, tried some serve and volley and achieved basically the same results that Jim Courier would have had.
Rublev played most of the time in attack, whilst Chung displayed fantastic defensive skills; after a first set (and half of the second) in which the game was mostly in Rublev’s hands, the Russian, when forced to face some troubles – due mostly to a decrease of the level of his game, which is something that happens quite physiologically during a tennis match – just melted and started to miss more and more. By contrast, Chung played throughout the match as a sort of human wall: he was able to defend almost everything, playing two metres behind the backline. More, whenever he had the opportunity to attack a short ball from his opponent, he did not waste it. I recognised in Chung the player that 3 or 4 years ago lost the Wimbledon junior final against Quinzi, even if I haven’t seen him ever since. Rublev showed the most spectacular shots, hitting from time to time marvellous winners; his ball was heavier than his opponent’s in basically all fundamentals of the game. Chung, instead, showed athleticism and mental strength; he displayed the best of his tennis when engaged in extreme defences, especially during the last set. I read that the Korean is assisted by a mental coach, whilst the Russian is not; mentally, the difference between the two was huge: I would suggest Rublev to imitate his young colleague in this respect. I express only one doubt on Chung: today he has beaten Rublev; fine. Will he be able to beat Rublev in 5 year time, when the Russian will be, most probably, mentally more solid and won’t melt as soon as he faces the first difficulties?
Ok, no more on the match (by the way, the 3rd-4th spot final was not even played, since Coric withdrew, and a pathetic exhibition with ball boys went on in its place); I want to focus, instead, on my overall impression on this formula.
First issue: does an under-21 master (i.e. mega-exhibition, this event does not award points) make any sense? Bonfiglio was an under 21 tournament, than it switched to under 18. Why organise a new under 21 event? Time ago I read that one of the aims of it was to help young players transitioning to the Pro tour, by offering a substantial economic support: indeed, the prizemoney of the event was impressive. If this was the goal, though, it has been missed. The lower ranked player who participated in the Next Gen was Medvedev, who won a prizemoney exceeding 600.000 Euro this year: far more than what he needs to face the costs of his activity. I.e., the money of the event went to young millionaires, and not to emerging players (with the exception of Quinzi, who, though, was a complete outsider compared to the other participants). So, let’s set aside the robin hood argument and let’s try to find others.
Is this rich exhibition justified to try new rules and test tomorrow’s tennis? Indeed the new rules were one of the most attractive features: media focused indeed real much on them, of course.
The most impacting innovation was indeed the “4-game 5-set” format. I think that overall it holds, though it has two big downside; so, finally, I didn’t like it. First, I felt that, compared to a 6 game set (by judging though on the only match I saw) the 4 game set does not allow to build up tension: tie break kicks in on 3-3, which is early; the first set flew away. Tension can build up during the overall match, but not really within the single sets and I think that this leads to lose an interesting part of tennis, i.e. the neat subdivision between sets. Ok, mathematically such subdivision is still there, but emotionally, I felt it much less. The short duration of each set leads to the other downside aspect: also considering the results of the other matches played, way too many sets were decided by a tie-break, which is a formula I don’t particularly love, even less if it becomes the natural and expected conclusion of the set.
Killer point: I hate it in doubles, I hate it in singles. I won’t spend any further considerations on this feature since it has been out there for a long time and I guess everybody has his/her own well-grounded view on it.
Even if I am a stats-nerd, I didn’t particularly enjoye the huge stats availability, since I found them to be too complicated to follow live; but, of course, this can’t be considered a “downside”. The “continuous” hawk-eye was instead useful to me as a spectator, but the lack of line judges was weird and contributed to the overall “plastic” impression mentioned in the heading: the computer voice literally screams (but why, why, why it shouts as such??) “out” and “fault”, of course always using the same tune: it gave me the impression to assist to a video-game and I was real annoyed by those screams during the first 30 minutes; nevertheless, after a while I got used to them. Let’s also skip the headphones for the coaching and the abolishment of the let, both of which I don’t find too impacting.
The prize for the trashiest idea, [1] in my view, goes to the stupid music (played together with useless flame-drawings appearing on the monitor) – a weird mix of terminator’s soundtrack played whilst the robot appears after his usual time travels and of an American b-movie thriller (note that the same atrocity was used on the first championship point, but not on the second and last one, since – being the score 40-40 – the computer was too stupid to realise that we had an actual championship point); again: why?? Why?? Why??
So, why I judge the Next Gen as a plastic event? The exhibition status of the tournament (no points awarded), the 4 games formula – which may have has its ups and downs but, for sure, unavoidably, parted the tournament from tennis’ traditions; the videogame hawk-eye voice; the stupid and useless break-point-terminator music, the annoying DJ and other features, made this tournament plastic, as other exhibitions are, such as the Hopman Cup or doubles played by Federer and Nadal or some Asian tournaments, which feature in the semi-finals a public made by three people. To feel such an impression was unavoidable, at least to a certain extent (maybe, it would have been better to elude Terminator and to play Verdi instead of disco music, during the breaks of the match: this would have been real revolutionary and at the same time would have linked to Milan and the Italian traditions, and would have made more sense, overall, since the monitor was fixed in a red structure resembling La Scala theatre). Notwithstanding all the above, my impression was not negative, not at all: the organisation of the event was overall very good and, maybe also due to the high prize money, the final was played seriously by the players and, from what I read, the other matches were too; most importantly, for four days, (young) players different from Federer/Nadal and Nadal/Federer were granted some visibility. For four days, eventually, they were the stars of the show. I grew up with Sampras-Agassi rivalry, but there were also Ivanisevic, Courier, Edberg, Becker, Krajicek, Stich, Ferreira and many others (such as Korda). Today tennis is always Federer-Nadal, even in exhibitions. With all the love one can have for those two guys (and maybe another couple of them), that’s not a good tendency, in my view. This Next Gen, indeed, offers some space to other players, and that’s positive. Though, a following question must be raised: Next Gen was a success, this can’t be contested; but, as said above, much curiosity was raised also by the 4 games formula. What will happen in the next editions: will we have always new rules to be tested or, finally, the players will have to keep a high interest on this event just by themselves? And they will be able to do that, since the best of them, as Zverev demonstrated, will skip the event to play in London? That’s the main Next Gen issue, in my view: it aims to be a prime-ranked show, but displays second-ranking stars; being a new event, not only it relies on no tradition but wants and has to break up with the traditions (we are all youngsters!!): at a point in time, though, there will be no more new rule to be tested nor traditions to be broken and all that will remain will be a wanna-be great show displaying second-ranked-wanna-be great players. Will this endure?
[1] The prize for trashiest idea does not go to the inauguration ceremony since i didn’t see it, but, from what I red, I believe it was out of contest.
