Professional tennis holds tight to tradition, but tradition ever so slowly changes.
Coaches are now permitted to communicate from the stands with players, electronic line calling arrives at Wimbledon next month, and all the majors now play a tiebreaker in a deciding set at 6-6 rather than wait for someone to win by two games (remember John Isner’s ludicrous 70-68 win at the All England Club?).
TNT enters next week’s French Open–qualifying is underway and streaming on Max–as the outsider coming into a sport more receptive to change than when it televised Wimbledon from 2000 to 2002. Twenty-three years later, TNT is back in tennis with first-to-last ball coverage of the French, and what TNT has on deck would have resulted in a bowl full of strawberries thrown in its direction if it had proposed it all those years ago in the UK.
TNT plans to mic up players on the practice courts, and coaches in the box during matches, something new to tennis. TNT has interviewed NBA head coaches at halftime, and ESPN interviews players and managers on Sunday Night Baseball during the game. But those domains are noisy, and emanate from a sports culture comfortable, or at least tolerant, of intrusive media.
“What we’re looking to do is put an IFB and a microphone on a coach in the coach’s box, and so that they can communicate with our booth announcers and analyst team during, during the match,” said Steve Fiorello, TNT’s Vice President Coordinating Director TNT Sports/WBD Sports (IFB is the acronym for interruptible foldback, which is what the closed circuit system is called). “And the idea is for us to pick a moment, I think we’re targeting, like the end of the first game of the second set, as that opportunity.
“The coaching aspect of tennis has become more prevalent now that coaches can actually talk to the players and hence, the evolution of this idea to trying to integrate the coach into our coverage.”
The French Federation of Tennis signed off on the proposal, though Fiorello said TNT has not begun approaching players and their coaching teams. Players employ coaches, so the athlete must presumably sign off on it.
Similarly, TNT has not begun asking teams about micing up the players during practice.
“When players are just taking an hour on one of the practice courts to get ready for the next day’s match, what we’re looking to do is try and put an IFB and a microphone on a player during that practice session, and maybe a little live two way while they’re warming up,” he said. “Maybe sometime early during their practice session, when they’re doing their slow movements, type of warm-ups, and then have them do a live two-way with our studio talent.”
How tennis players respond to the TNT asks will be worth watching. Unlike the NBA and MLB examples Fiorello cites, the players here are independent contractors with no league pushing them to participate. Whether they see it in their best interest is hard to tell. The coaching experiment will only occur in the two main stadiums, Philippe Chatrier Court and Court Suzanne Lenglen
Also, TNT (and truTV and Max) takes over from NBC and Tennis Channel, outlets with a deep pedigree in sports. TNT last televised tennis when George W. Bush was in his first term. Players and coaches may not be familiar with the TNT officials asking them to mic up.
Fiorello also points to another advance TNT is unveiling, a small camera on the side between the back wall and the players’ chairs. About eight inches long and three inches wide, these nucleus cameras are remotely controlled and can zoom in and out. Their positioning is designed to capture players from the side as they battle from behind the baseline. The FFT also approved their insertion on the side of the court.
“The FFT was really great to work with to allow us to put those cameras out so we can really, kind of create our own coverage and be able to control,” Fiorello said. “That’s not always the case when you’re dealing with the French Open or Roland Garros, purely because space is of a premium here. So to try and get unilateral cameras on Chatrier and Lenglen is difficult purely because, like I said, there’s just not a lot of space for those camera positions, but we’ve worked closely with them.”
Roland Garros, a French WWI fighter pilot, is the official name of the French Open and one TNT is using in its coverage.
