After so much talk, the IPTL is finally about to take-off.
What’s the IPTL?
The International Premier Tennis League is a new concept devised by Indian tennis legend Mahesh Bhupathi. The idea is to create a “nimble format” to attract top players to compete during the off-season (is there any off-season anymore?).
THE TEAMS
There are going to be 4 teams represented all kind 28 players (men, ladies and legends) with 21 Grand Slam Champions and 14 (current and former) world no.1
Manila Mavericks:
Murray
Tsonga
Nestor
Sharapova
Flipkens
Moya
Heuy
Singapore Slammers:
Serena Williams
Agassi
Hewitt
Rafter
Berdych
Hantuchova
Kyrgios
Soares
Micromax Indian Aces:
Federer
Sampras
Ivanovic
Monfils
Santoro
Bopanna
Mirza
UAE Royals:
Djokovic
Ivanisevic
Cilic
Wozniacki
Zimonjic
Jaziri
Mladenovic.
When and where is the IPTL going to be played?
The league will be played in
Manila (28-30 Nov)
Singapore (2-4 Dec)
Delhi (6-8 Dec)
Dubai (11-13 Dec)
THE FORMAT
What’s a Match?
A match consists of 5 set played by different competitors.
Each set has 6 games, but a shoot-out is played at 5-all. The shoot-out will follow the same rules as the tiebreak with the difference that the player that wins more point after 5 minutes wins the set. There are no change-overs during a tie-break.
Each set is played by 5 different formats as follows:
1- Men’s Singles
2- Women’s Singles
3- Mixed Doubles
4- Men’s Doubles
5- Men’s Legends Singles
The order of play will be decided by the home team.
Who wins a match?
The match winner is the team that has won more games from all sets (so the games decide the winner not the sets).
The last set is the most important one. In fact, if the leading team (leading in terms of games) wins the last set he wins the match.
On the other side if the trailing team wins the set, but it has won less games (accumulated in the all sets), than the last set goes on. If the trailing team manages to tie in terms of overall games, then they will play a “Super Shoot-out”. If the leading team wins 1 more game, then they win the match.
The “Super shoot-out” is played with the same rules of the “shoot-out” with the difference that is played on a period of time of 7 minutes.
Points won
The team that wins the match will get 4 points.
The losing team will get:
2 points if it wins more than 20 game points
1 point it wins at least 10 game points
0 points if the losing side won less than 10 game points
Who wins the league?
The team that wins the league is the one with most points.
In case of a tie these are the criteria that will decide the winner:
1- Head to Head (in the standing)
2- Numbers of games won
3- Numbers of games lost
4- Biggest games winning margin in any single match win
5- Coin Toss
The winning team will get a check of 1 million US dollars (that coin could be quite valuable!)
THE INNOVATIONS
There are many innovative elements that may be borrowed also by the official circuits.
1- No-ad system. At 40-all the player that wins the following point wins also the game
2- Shot clock: 20 seconds between points, 45 seconds during change overs, 60 seconds for time-outs, 3 minutes among sets. Any time violation will result in a point loss for the violating team.
Only the chair-umpire can set, stop or re-start the shot clock
3- Time-Out. Each team has a 60 seconds Time-Out that can be used only once per set
4- “Power Point”. Once per set every receiving player can call for a “Power Point”. If that player wins he will receive 2 points.
Game on!
This is interesting, but it will probably be quite messy. Probably the Shot Clock and the Time-Out are the most interesting innovations. I also understand that the unused challengers can be carried on the next set.