Just like that, the second season of the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) is over. Blink and you would have missed it. If you kept your eyes firmly open for the last three weeks, you might well have missed it as well.
After two seasons, the IPTL is still trying to find a place for itself in the tennis universe. Dismissed by many journalists and pundits as purely an “exhibition tournament”, it is still fighting to be taken seriously.
It also falls in tennis’ increasingly limited off-season. Whilst most conventional sports have anything from a three to six month off-season, tennis is not blessed with such extravagances. The New Year’s champagne has barely dried up when the WTA and ATP season begins again in the first week of January. Sometimes even tennis fans need a break from the sport.
But the IPTL is more than just an off-season exhibition tournament. The second season of the IPTL offered a higher standard of play than the debut year. You only need to glance briefly at the excellent IPTL Youtube page to see quite how good the quality of tennis was.
This has been reinforced by the players. During a press conference, Roger Federer addressed the issue of the “exhibition” and responded accordingly.
“The question is what is an exhibition? There is a kids’ day exhibition in Australia – Nickelodeon-style, obviously, where you hit and giggle with Scooby Doo, you know. This is not Scooby Doo, so clearly we are playing serious tennis. You have 15,000 people who are serious about tennis.”
After battling against Federer in the Delhi leg of this year’s event, Rafael Nadal was equally assured of the standard of play.
“I don’t think these are exhibition matches, these games are very competitive. The intensity of the competition is good. I feel the rules are perfect in the IPTL and it’s a great idea.”
Nadal also touched on another unique facet of the IPTL: the rules.
The elements are there to create a unique brand of tennis to attract a new audience to the sport. The double-point power-plays are always fun as well as the “deciding points”, making it a winner-takes-all situation at deuce rather than a two-clear-points.
Perhaps the greatest change to conventional tennis rulings is the no-lets rule – meaning that if a serve hits the net and lands in, you must play the point rather than play a let. You can’t tell me you don’t love seeing Goran Ivanisevic scamper forward in the desperate hope of retrieving a dodgy net-cord from Fabrice Santoro.
The blend of players in a team format is probably the highlight of the IPTL. Tennis, as we well know, can be a very lonely sport. Traveling for over ten months of the year, competing on your own, only being able to play as part of a team if you play Davis Cup. The IPTL provides an alternative.
The mix of doubles specialists, regular singles competitors, and legends is an intriguing sight to see. When else would you be able to see Marat Safin, Leander Paes ,and Kurumi Nara cheering ecstatically for Pierre-Hughes Herbert?
The event also does a superb job of promoting doubles–the unappreciated, often forgotten delight of professional tennis. You would expect the likes of showmen Nick Kyrgios, Dustin Brown, and Gael Monfils to provide the box office moments, but in reality, it was the Leander Paes, Sania Mirza, and Rohan Bopanna who often got the crowd gasping the most with their array of exceptional shot-making.
For some players, the IPTL has the potential to be not just a fun end of season tournament, but also an experience for genuine learning. We have seen plenty of Nick Kyrgios’ antics throughout 2015 but in the IPTL he was in his element. The tenacious Aussie thrived in the team environment and took full advantage of his involvement.
“For me this is a massive opportunity to be in the same team with Stan – Grand Slam Champion, Marcelo – Number 1 doubles player in the world, Carlos – one of the greatest players to have ever played.
“For me sitting on the bench it’s massive watching them and seeing how they train. The relationships I now have. That’s priceless!”
All of these elements combine to create something agreed by both spectators and players: fun. Amongst all the talk of travel, competition and ticket prices, it is the word “fun” that is a constant in discussion of the IPTL. You need spend only five minutes looking at the twitter search results for “#IPTL fun”, to see that it is both the average spectator and the blue-tick verified professionals who enjoy the IPTL.
This is just the second series of the IPTL and it still has plenty of room to mature and grow. For a sport that prides itself on gender equality there is maybe too much emphasis on men and it would be beneficial to see more women added to next year’s bill – especially legends. There was also some debate around ticket prices, with high prices to fund the attendance of the best players alienating many local people from attending the event.
But finding weak spots in the IPTL is not the purpose of this article. This article is written to try and increase both awareness and interest in the IPTL ahead of #IPTL3. It is also a plea to those who know of the IPTL but have chosen to ignore it thus far. I can’t claim to have watched much of the debut year, but I found myself sucked into this year’s edition and will certainly be tuning in next year as well. Give the IPTL a chance. You never know, you might find you actually like it.
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