Last month, the ATP President Chris Kermode announced that the new Next Gen ATP Finals will have an innovative format.

The finals are played by the top under 21 players in the world (according to the ATP rankings), and they will take place in Milan from November 7-11 at Fiera Milano.

The new format

As per Kermode, the matches will be played following a best of five set format and each set will be conquered by the first player winning four games. At 3-all a tiebreak will take place. There will be a shot clock (finally!) to enforce the 25-second rule, and the medical time-out will be shorter.

The warm up will last just 5 minutes, and there will be a no-let rule applied to serves.

Murray’s opinion

Andy favors testing new formats to comment

“Tennis is doing very well right now but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s going to be the case in the future, so I think it’s important to try new formats, different scoring systems and see if it works,” Murray told reporters.

“It is good to try new things… at least it’s trying something different. You have to give credit for doing that, because tennis has often been accused of being too traditional, not wanting to try new things.

I would prefer to try a shorter set with the same scoring, rather than the sudden-death deuce points.” 

… and Djokovic’s

Nole has already expressed his favorable opinion

“In terms of introducing new things and new rules to the tennis, I think everything is evolving in life and sport does, too,” commented the Serbian. Tennis has to be open-minded for this kind of new potential changes.”