ATP Rule Changes

The ATP Board of Directors have announced two new rule changes which will come into effect for the 2013 season. The changes, which were agreed upon at a meeting in New York in early September, are aimed at helping the flow of the game and reducing the time taken between points. The changes are going to make it easier for umpires to punish players who take too much time between points and help stem the flow of criticism that the officials come in for. The changes were proposed by the new ATP Competition Committee.
The Competition Committee was announced in August this year and was created to recommend and evaluate changes for the professional game at both World Tour and Challenger levels. The committee has got six members and will act in an advisory role to the Board of Directors. The six members consists of two Tournament Council designated representatives, two Player Council designated representatives and one at-large member and one committee chairman. The Tournament Council representatives are Sergio Palmieri and Graham Pearce. Palmieri is the Tournament Director of the ATP Masters 1000 event in Rome while Pearce is the former Director of the ATP 250 event in Auckland, a very popular event that takes place at the beginning of the year. Pearce will also provide a wealth of experience having served on the Board of Directors for ten years.
Lorne Abony and Weller Evans are the Player Council representatives. Abony has got a great relationship with the players having raised over a million dollars for charity through his Pro-Am events with the help of the players. Evans gave over two decades working for the ATP and has got a vast knowledge of the game. The Tournament Director of the event in Rotterdam, Richard Krajicek, has been nominated as the at-large representative and Gayle David Bradshaw, ATP Executive Vice President of Rules & Competition, was appointed committee chairman. Krajicek and Bradshaw were both nominated by ATP Executive Chairman and President Brad Drewett. All the ideas they come up with are then presented to the ATP Board and they then decide whether to pass them as official rule changes.
The rule changes announced by Drewett are a good start to the relationship between the committee and the board. From the start of next season, on both the ATP World Tour and ATP Challenger Tour, a time violation between points (25 seconds) will be penalised in the first instance with a warning. For the second and all subsequent violations, the penalty will be a fault for the server and a point penalty for the receiver. This is a change on the current rule where after a warning a point penalty is issued to both the server and receiver. This change is much easier to enforce for umpires and I think it's a step in the right direction to eliminating unnecessary time wasting from the sport.
The Board also announced a trial elimination of the service let for the first three months of next season. This is only to be trialled on the ATP Challenger Tour as the ATP assess the reaction to the change. The Board will get feedback from players and if successful it is likely to lead to a longer trial on the Challenger Tour before being introduced on the main tour. Although this change isn't going to shorten the length of a match but it will help improve the flow of the game. The changes look like being a positive change for the game and with the recent introduction of a Competition Committee the tour is heading in the right direction to develop the game to be the best it can be.