Throughout her Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Year-End Championships coverage for The Tennis Channel, former doubles world number one Corina Morariu has praised the elimination of the ad point in doubles as "exciting." Her rationale is that once the score is a deuce, there is only one chance to win the game. I get it, but the word I would pick is "fast." Or maybe "boring." Exciting is having multiple deuces, multiple game points and multiple break points. Winning a game after saving at least one break point is thrilling, as is winning a game after saving at least one game point.
No-ad scoring and the advent of the super-tiebreak are only two of the horrors planned for dumbing down doubles. There is also a proposal to call for a tiebreak at 4-all. Martina Navratilova, of all people, has called for the end of the ad point in singles. I recently saw ATA doubles players Knowles and Nestor call for it, too. While it is true that shortening doubles matches does attact more singles specialists to play doubles at tournaments, what is the point if the doubles matches are going to be boring?
No-ad scoring in doubles makes the match go faster, but rather than being exciting, it actually sucks the excitement right out of the game.
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