Novak Djokovic continues to discuss rules changes during his Wimbledon post-match press conferences (Image: Getty)
Novak Djokovic has suggested that reducing the length of tennis matches could attract younger people with shorter attention spans to the sport. The 24-time Grand Slam champion spoke at length about tennis’ future after his straight-sets second-round win over Stefanos Tsitsipas at Wimbledon.
Djokovic, 39, also spoke in detail about changing to tournament structures after winning his opening match at the All England Club against Yibing Wu. He laid out a vision for the sport to reduce injuries that impact tournaments such as Wimbledon, with Carlos Alcaraz, Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper all missing out on this summer’s championships due to various issues.
Asked about how tennis could innovate further, in particular, about players wearing microphones, Djokovic said: “I don’t know if I’ll be comfortable being mic’d up during the performance. Practice is fine. But there are different ways of innovating. As I mentioned in the previous press conference, I think we also have to look into the format of competition and the rules of how we play on the respective tours.
“Just the point is how do we attract new fans, younger fans, younger audiences, that has a short attention span? They like the dynamic content, which we actually have.
“Tennis is a very dynamic, exciting sport. One-on-one. But sometimes it can go on for too long. If you’re not a diehard tennis fan, maybe it’s not as interesting for other people to watch something for three, four, five hours when they have everything available on their screens, right?
“It’s not hot water. It’s not just me talking about it, thinking about it. As I can hear or see in the last 15 years, there are a lot of people talking about how we can all improve the sport. Not much is happening on that end or changing. It still stays in the theory rather than in reality. Let’s see. I don’t know. Obviously, I’m not in a position to have the magic wand and change and decide what needs to be changed. I’m always open to discussion. Happy to use my platform or whatever influence we can collectively improve the game.”
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Novak Djokovic has shown that he is open to speaking at length on the future of tennis at Wimbledon (Image: Getty)
Djokovic has now spoken about shortening matches for the second straight press conference. He previously said: “In my opinion, we have to change the format, the tours, have the tournaments have shorter matches, more dynamic, be able to have something more interesting and shorter length ‘cause this is too long. You know what I mean?
“Grand Slams, that’s different. Playing best-of-five and so forth, I have my opinions on that. I think at least on the tours we can play around. We need to. It’s not happening. So let’s see what happens there.”
However, he is not hopeful of change. Djokovic said: “I don’t see that happening because what I’ve been hearing and what I’ve been seeing in the last couple of years, there’s a lot more conflict within the governing bodies of our sport than there is unity,” he said.
“That’s a long answer to your question. I’m all for innovation and change because we have to retain the culture and history of our sport, which I’ve always respected.”