Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Amanda Anisimova have spoken about the prospect of the best-of-five set format being introduced for women’s matches at Grand Slams.
Men play best-of-five set matches at the four Grand Slams, while women play best-of-three set matches.
Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley sparked debate by calling for the longer format to be used from the quarter-finals onwards at women’s majors.
“One of the things I’ve been saying now is that I think there should be three out of five sets for women,” Tiley told AAP.
“We should look at the last few matches – the quarters and the semis and the finals – and make the women’s side three out of five.
“So it’s something we should put on the agenda and start talking to the players about it because there’s some matches in those last rounds which would have been fascinating had they been three out of five sets.
“Now I don’t know whether the players would want to do it or not, but it is something we need to consider on the women’s side.”
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What did Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Amanda Anisimova say about playing best-of-five set matches?
Swiatek, Gauff and Anisimova — all of whom are top five players on the WTA Tour — were asked about playing best-of-five set matches during the Qatar Open in Doha. Here is what they said:
Swiatek:
“I think with the world right now that is kind of, like, speeding up, I don’t really think it makes sense for us to play such long matches. Especially when I think it would be tough to keep the quality up throughout the whole match.
“But if you ask specifically about my game, I consider myself one of the players that is kind of tough in coping with endurance and longer matches. I think maybe I would have some advantage.
“Honestly, I’ve never played such a long match, so I have no idea how my body would react. I think also the whole season would change, because we would need to plan everything differently and prepare for these long, long matches. There would, for sure, be many, many more questions about the scheduling then.”
Gauff:
“I mean, could I play best-of-five sets? Probably, yes. Do I want to? I mean, it’s a lot of playing. I don’t know. I feel like, from a spectator’s standpoint, it would be just too much for the men and women to play best-of-five.”
Anisimova:
“I mean, we’ve always played best-of-three, so I feel like that would be a crazy change for us. Also very physical on a woman’s body. So yeah, I prefer to obviously play three sets, for sure.”
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