[Nimomunz]

So this is what weirtheim (sp) thinks.

I find your idea of an ATP All-Star weekend interesting. What would that all entail? A fastest-serve derby? A sudden-death tiebreaker for the top eight players in a tournament?
-- Ben Bittner, Oshkosh, Wisc.

What if you held this before the U.S. Open -- players are in town anyway, so you'd have easy television leverage -- and included:

a) a fast-serve contest on a standard gun, not the USTA Davis Cup gun.

b) An NHL-style skills contest. Place, say an agent's BlackBerry in the corner of a service box and see how many times out of 10 a player can hit it on the fly.

c) A 40-yard dash.

d) A trick contest, a la the Slam Dunk contest. Anyone who's seen Mansour Bahrami play knows how creative this could get.

e) A quick-hands contest. Have one player stand at the service line -- not the baseline -- and serve at a player at the net. See how many volleys the netman can pick off. If you guys have more ideas, fire away. ...

what do you guys think? do you honestly see any atp player doing this? or will it be like an exhibition all play and no work!

 

[Blaze]

Its a great idea but being that these players have a crowded schedule already, I don't see anyone taking of time to do it.

Unless they have a break during the season like for atleast two weeks ala NBA or Baseball

 

[Scotso]

They do similar stuff on AA Kid's day at the US Open.

 

[Neely]

Funny idea, but while, for example, the NBA Slam Dunk contest has surprising winners with lots of new and exciting players who bring new ideas into the game and who use their creativity to make it less predictable, something like a Fast Serve Contest would only be interesting between players that usually serve in the same range of speed to avoid obvious predictability. And in such a contest, the amount of creativity would be limited, to say the least. But well, so it is for the MLB Homerun Derby where it's all about bashing (admittedly, also timing) the ball as hard as you can and it's still a success. Okay, it's baseball after all

In theory, I would like the "skill contest" best. It could be done as described by serve placement exercises trying to hit a certain area. Or players could get other tasks like "now hit a forehand lob" or "hit a dropshot as short as possible" to show off particular shots. Things like that, it would be possible! Maybe... But then again, while the NHL or NBA All-Star Skills Challenges can include placement, speed, accuracy, passing and ball/puckhandling exercises in a continous course that can be done in 60 or less seconds, it's harder for tennis to fluently combine multiple exercises and bringing the time factor into the game and I guess it would be more like an isolated shot-by-shot challenge.


Personally, I would love to see such a day with some players showing off some fancy or crazy things/shots that they usually can't do in an official competetive match