GO NEW YORK GO NEW YORK GO

Before we take a look at the new possible changes though, let's first talk about past changes to the doubles format.

1. 3rd Set Tiebreaks and No-Ad Rule

The 2006 season brought along one of the first big changes to the professional doubles tour - a super tiebreak instead of a third set as well as the no-ad scoring system at ATP events. Officially designed to make doubles more exciting for fans as well as making the matches more predictable for easier scheduling for both tournament officials and broadcasters, the real reason probably was mostly about money. Apparently, the doubles tour had been in the red for the past 15 years, so the change ultimately was also an attempt to make doubles more profitable again.

By making the matches predictably shorter, they wanted to achieve two things. On one hand, shorter doubles matches on average mean less time on court "wasted" on the less profitable matches (doubles match duration compared to 2005 decreased from 87.73 mins to 71.51 mins on average). On the other hand, it should encourage more top singles players to sign up for doubles as well, effectively drawing their fanbases' attention to the doubles matches too.

This leads us directly to my second point.

2. Entry via Singles Ranking

While I am not sure if this is a change or if it has been in order ever since the introduction of doubles ATP rankings in 1976 (earliest source stating the rule i found was the 2006 ATP rule book), players can enter DOUBLES draws using their SINGLES ranking. Now, what does this mean?

If Player A has a singles ranking of #18 and a doubles ranking of number #342 and they want to enter a doubles tournament with player B, who only has a singles rating of #659 and a doubles ranking of #12, they have a combined ranking of 18+12=30 instead of the 342+12 = 354 if you only counted the doubles rankings.

This essentially enables top singles players to enter the doubles draws on top of the singles tournament. (Note here, that the converse rule doesnt hold and doubles players cant enter singles tournaments using their doubles ranking.) While maybe increasing ATP doubles tour profits I'd argue that this rule is becoming increasingly problematic for doubles specialists.

For obvious reasons, making the main draw of a doubles tournament as a doubles specialist is more difficult if doubles pairs of singles players are competing for the spots with their singles ranking too. The above example of a doubles pair of singles players would get priority over a pair of doubles specialists both ranked around #20 in the world.

This particularly is a problem in combination with the predictably shorter matches (no ad rule, 3rd set tie break or even change from bo5 to bo3 format at grand slams for the mens doubles), because more singles players will choose to enter doubles too. Now, I don't fault them for signing up for doubles with a colleague or friend, have a little fun and earn a little pocket money on the side, but it does cause doubles specialists to lose out on crucial prize money. Especially considering how much smaller the doubles prize money pool is and that they still have to split it between the pair but more on that later.

In fact, I'd enjoy watching my favourite singles players play doubles too. What i personally take offense in though are teams made up of only singles players withdrawing on mass last second before a tournament or somewhere along the first two rounds because at least one of them has a good run in the singles tournament. This is very harmful as it makes the schedule even more unpredictable for doubles specialists who didnt qualify for the main draw based on ranking (do they show up on site as alternates and risk travel costs without guarantee for compensational prize money or do they simply stay home/play a smaller tournament?) as well as kind of cheats them out of the much needed prize money.

We have seen this happen for example with this year's french open where they actually ran out of alternates and had to hand out BYEs due to suspiciously many singles teams withdrawing probably to minimize the time they spent on court in the extreme heat. The same thing is happening at wimbledon (albeit not to the same extent) too. And yes, there are penalty fees for late withdrawals, but they are way too low for singles players well into the top 100 to care much about.

On the other hand, next to none of the really big tennis names with significant fanbases nowadays are regularly playing doubles anymore. (We used to have a lot of no1 also playing doubles a lot, eg. McEnroe, Becker, or the Williams sisters.) But the idea of drawing attention to doubles by including singles players only works if the top of the top players enter. (Maybe there is also an argument to make that this might be a symptom of the increasingly demanding tour life.)

3. Prize Money Share

The new proposal from a few days ago suggests a change to the prize money split between singles and doubles for ATP events starting 2028 to 90/10 instead of the previous 80/20 share. Doubles prize pool would then only make up 10% of the total prize money provided by the ATP tournament compared to 20% right now which essentially implies that doubles players would earn half as much as they do now. Combined with the fact that doubles players have to split the prize money between two people it makes doubles as a profession basically unviable for everyone outside the top 20-30.

While I do agree that all tennis players should get more of the money they create as revenue (right now its 15% compared to most other big sports 50%), I dont think the solution is to delete one branch of tennis to increase the prize money for the other branch.

4. Draw Size Cuts

Another proposed change is to cut all ATP tournaments doubles draw sizes in half. This means Masters 1000 events would implement a 16 teams draw instead of previous 32 teams and 500s and below would go from a draw size of 16 to only EIGHT teams. With nowadays up to half the spots taken up by players entering via singles rankings, that would in the worst case mean there are only eight spots (masters) or four spots (rest of tournaments) left for the doubles specialists pairs.

5. Challenger Tour Doubles Entry

The challenger tour consists of all ATP 50s-175s tournaments and is the tour level below the ATP circuit but one above the Futures level. Basically, as a tennis player you start by playing Futures tournaments until you have accumulated enough ATP points to get into Challenger tournaments where you then try to get enough points to qualify for the "real" ATP tour tournaments. The new proposal now implies that SINGLES players on the challenger tour get priority entry to the DOUBLES challenger event over doubles specialists. This change would make it increasingly difficult for rising doubles players to make it to the ATP tour.

I think this change especially is ridiculous. Top singles players often are not the best doubles players. They often treat a doubles court as a wider singles one with two players on both sides. But doubles has different tactics, angles, shot selections to offer than singles has, though both require to be very, very good at tennis. It's a little bit like the different categories of chess i think. A classical chess player is not automatically the best at blitz chess and the other way around but both are definitely good at chess.

There is a reason why Errani/Vavassori won last year's USO mixed event instead of all the doubles pairings of famous singles players, and there is a reason that most doubles tournaments are won by doubles players. They're specialists at what they do.

6. Conclusion

The ATP keeps justifying their changes as cost saving measures, but why is doubles even so unpopular among tennis fans?

I would argue that one of the biggest issues is that the ATP is not promoting doubles at all. If you look at the social media channels of the ATP tour you rarely (if at all) find a clip or post about doubles. The tournament channels are not looking much better. Take for example the monte carlo masters 2025 who posted ONE measly tik tok about their doubles champions compared to well over 10 for Carlos Alcaraz' win.

Furthermore, few of the doubles matches actually get commentary by the broadcasters even in english (let alone other languagues). While I personally don't necessarily need commentary to enjoy watching tennis, it can be a factor for others, especially people getting into tennis. Knowledgeable comms i think can increase your fascination with the sport and encourage you to watch more doubles.

Doubles specialists should not be basically invisible to media. They are top athletes in their own branch of a sport and should not be treated as some lower class tennis players by the institution as well as fans.