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The Champions Tennis League or CTL has already made a huge impact on tennis fans across India, but there has been a bit of lingering confusion about the scoring system used in the tournament. The differentiation between a tie and a match still eludes many, as does the rationale behind the nine point tie-break.
The rules may seem a tad different at first sight, but they aren’t complicated at all when explored fully. In fact, you could say that the unique format ensures that the play is even more thrilling than usual.
Here is a detailed explanation of the scoring system used in the CTL:
Order of matches
The order of matches is pre-determined in all CTL ties. The first match features the team skippers or, as they are referred to, the ‘legends’, followed by a mixed-doubles set. The third match features women’s singles which is followed by men’s doubles. The last set of the tie is men’s singles.
Difference between ‘tie’ and ‘match’
The six teams are divided into two zones, North and South, with each zone comprising of three teams. Each team in a zone plays ‘ties’ against the two other teams, and each tie in turn comprises of five sets.
Is a set a part of a match?
One of the most commonly misunderstood aspects about the CTL scoring system is how many sets make a match. Actually though, there’s no difference between a set and a match; each ‘match’ is comprised of one ‘set’. Accordingly, it follows that five sets or matches make up one tie between two teams.
Scoring system
In some ways, the scoring system at the CTL is similar to the scoring system in a conventional tennis match. The first player in a singles match or the first team in a doubles match to win six games wins the match. But there is no-ad scoring in games; i.e., if the score in a game goes to deuce, the winner of the next point wins the game (as opposed to the requirement of winning two consecutive points in a traditional tennis match).
The biggest difference, however, comes in the tie-break rules. For starters, the tie-break comes into play if the score reaches 5-5 (instead of 6-6 in a regular match). And there are a few more differences in the way the tie-break unfolds too.
How is the tie-break played?
The CTL tie-break has a fixed length; it can either be more less than nine points long. This, of course, is radically different from conventional tennis, where a tie-break can be as short as seven points or as long as 40.
The nine-point tie break system entails two serves per player or team which opens the tie-break, followed by two serves for the opposing player or team. The sides are changed after the first four points are played. Thereafter, there are two serves again for the player or team which opened the tie break, followed by two serves to the player or team which served on the third and fourth points.
In case the score reaches 4-4 in the tie-break, the player/team serving the seventh and eighth points serves the last point, but to the side chosen by the receiving player/team. In other words, the point could either be served to the deuce or the ad court, depending on the choice of the receiving player or team.
The first player or team to win five points in the tie-break wins the breaker, which is then scored as an additional game won. So the margin of victory after reaching 5-5 in a set and then winning the tie-breaker would be 6-5.
Winning a tie
Though each set produces a winner, overall victory in a tie is determined by the total games won across the five sets, rather than the number of sets won in the tie. So even if one team wins three out of the five sets (or even four out of five in extreme cases) but wins less games in total than the other team, it would end up as the loser in the tie. There’s one more important caveat though: a team can only win a tie if it wins the last game of the tie.
This throws up many interesting possibilities, and the Hyderabad Aces vs Bangalore Raptors tie on the first day is a good case study. In that tie, Hyderabad won the first, third and fourth games by the scores of 6-5, 6-3 and 6-3 respectively, while Bangalore won the second game 6-5. Going into the last set, Hyderabad had won 23 games, while Bangalore had won 17, for a deficit of six games. So basically, the only way Bangalore could win the tie was if they won the last set by a margin of seven games.
Now Feliciano Lopez, playing for Bangalore, technically ‘won’ the set at 6-3, which brought his team’s games tally to 23 and Hyderabad’s to 26. But since Hyderabad’s Mikhail Youzhny hadn’t won the last game, his team couldn’t claim victory despite leading in the games tally. So the set went on, until finally Youzhny won a game to make it 4-8, which meant Bangalore had won 25 games and Hyderabad, 27. In other words, Hyderabad had won more games than Bangalore and they had also won the final game of the tie, which gave them overall victory.
It must be noted here that if Lopez had managed to put a distance of seven or more games between himself and Youzhny, say by winning it 7-0, 8-1, 9-2 or 10-3, he would have ensured victory for the Bangalore team.
Which teams progress to the final, and how?
At the end of all the zonal matches – four matches per team in each zone – the top two teams in each zone with the most number of games under their belt will play each other in the final. Currently, after four matches, Delhi is leading the North Zone with 52 games and Hyderabad is at the top of the South Zone, again with 52 games.
The infographic below neatly summarizes all of the above!
Originally published on the Champions Tennis League website here.
