Laver Cup is the latest example of a doubles renaissance

Team Europe was in big trouble in the Laver Cup last year in Berlin, Germany, trailing an on-fire Team World, 8-4. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so the squad turned to its biggest star and asked if he was willing to stand in and play doubles.

Carlos Alcaraz agreed, chose Norway’s Casper Ruud as his partner, and together the men defeated Team World’s formidable pairing of Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe. That launched a reversal that led to Team Europe’s ultimate victory.

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There was a time when stars rarely competed in doubles, but those days are long past. Doubles is currently in the throes of a renaissance, despite periodic attempts to downgrade or even eliminate the sport at the professional level. There are multiple reasons for the heightened visibility and popularity of the tandem game.

1. Participation from the game’s stars

The growing interest in doubles spiked at the recent US Open, with the spectacular success of its reimagined mixed doubles event. That so many top players chose to compete in the event on the eve of the year’s final Grand Slam tournament gave doubles a great, and perhaps lasting, boost.

If the game has a “Mr. Tennis,” it has to be Taylor Fritz. There isn’t a more diligent, open-minded and dedicated student of the game. One month before the US Open, he said of the newly announced approach, “Mixed doubles is always a great challenge, and I’ve had some amazing experiences with it over the years, from the Olympics to the United Cup, and even the USO Mixed Madness last year.”

You just can’t buy that amount of positive publicity. The comment set the tone for the event, which ultimately featured many of the game’s top names: Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Iga Swiatek, Naomi Osaka, to name a few. But let’s be realistic: appearance money (as well as the champion’s haul of $1 million for fairly short work) was clearly an incentive. And nobody has suggested that its success will lead top players to increased participation at the tour level. Today’s singles game is just too demanding to expect that. But there are many other ways to keep doubles thriving.

Rajeev Ram, a still-active 41-year old—and six-time Grand Slam champion and former doubles No. 1—told me, “The USTA showed that they're trying, they're doing something different to put this particular discipline in the forefront. But changes over the years to the entry system, the ranking system, the scoring system haven’t enticed top people to play doubles. So pure logic tells me ‘No, there's not a way [to recruit stars],’ But there may be other ways and we still haven't tried to make the top doubles players stars of any kind.”

2. Innovative events

Tennis long resisted changes to traditional formats. But the game has embraced the idea of non-tour, exhibition-style events in recent years, and doubles has been a beneficiary. Turns out there’s a happy doubles player living within every singles player.

Nothing attests to that more convincingly than Laver Cup, as that anecdote about Alcaraz demonstrates. The competition, which begins this Friday, features two six-player teams, and no competitor can play more than two singles matches. At least four players per team must participate in doubles.

“Laver Cup doubles is just awesome,” David Macpherson, who made a career out of coaching the most successful doubles team of all time, twins Mike and Bob Bryan, told me. “It’s wonderful for doubles when you get these opportunities for [showcasing] the game.”

Beyond Laver Cup over the last decade, the Eisenhower Cup has become a hugely popular special event at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. It is probably the single factor most responsible for the USTA’s bold reimagining of MXD. An eight-team mixed doubles event, the Eisenhower Cup uses the fast-paced Tie Break Tens format—each “match” is a ten-point tiebreaker—that has gotten traction with some event promoters.

Tie Break Tens is a great advertisement for the breakneck pace of doubles, and the reflexes it demands. And since it isn’t nearly as taxing as even streamlined, best-of-three set tennis, it appeals to big names. As time passes, we are likely to see more rather than fewer of these events.

3. The streamlined scoring system

The door to innovation was cracked open in the early 2000s, when the Australian and US Opens adopted the match tiebreaker as a replacement for the third set in mixed doubles. The tours soon followed suit, and soon even men's and women’s doubles featured the altered format.

This paved the way for tournament promoters and broadcast schedulers to give doubles greater visibility, because the format guaranteed that matches ended in under two hours. It also broke trail for other formats experiments, like Fast4 Tennis and Tie Break Tens. Organizers were freed to think creatively.

“I think some of the things they've done, like having some of the early rounds or even the middle rounds or quarterfinals on the larger courts, was good,” Joe Salisbury, runner-up with Neal Skupski in the US Open men’s doubles, said after their semifinal—which was played before a large crowd on the tournament’s No. 2 court, Louis Armstrong Stadium. “Their scheduling also was better in general, in ways that allowed more fans to come out to watch.”

For the mixed doubles final, ESPN miked up Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe (who had upset top-seeded Kateřina Siniaková and Taylor Townsend), enabling fan to eavesdrop on their changeover after the first set.

“I think that for fans to hear the way that we're thinking after the first set is really cool, and to kind of get an inside look to our brains when we're playing is really cool,” Routliffe said. “It will get more eyes on doubles. It’s exactly what we want.”

4. A key role in team competitions

Doubles is the key, third “swing” match in the Davis Cup competition. Top players have routinely stepped in to play doubles in a crisis. That delights fans.

In Billie Jean King Cup, the doubles is the third—and therefore potentially decisive—match. Last year, a strong Polish team anchored by Swiatek was beaten in the semifinals by Italy, as the premier doubles team of Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini prevailed in doubles after the singles matches were split.

In Laver Cup, doubles factors into every day of the competition. If Team World and Team Europe are tied after all 12 matches, a one-set doubles match is played, with ad scoring.

Laver Cup doubles is just awesome. It’s wonderful for doubles when you get these opportunities for [showcasing] the game. David Macpherson, former coach of Bob and Mike Bryan

5. Heightened fan interest

The US Open mixed doubels event was played in front of a two-day sellout crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium, with an additional 20,000 fans watching in Louis Armstrong Stadium. We have long known that far more recreational players prefer doubles to singles, and with marquee names, the atmosphere at doubles matches can be just as electric than in a singles battle.

Tournament owners also know that as they stretch events over more days and multiple sessions, a robust doubles game represents opportunity. Everyone wins when a stadium program offers the kind of variety doubles can provide.

Doubles has matured—it is a unique game now. Doubles enthusiasts who were disappointed by the fact that the US Open mixed was largely invitational felt vindicated when the winners were the only true doubles specialists in the draw, Italians Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori.

“There's always been that feeling out there like, ‘Oh, if two great singles players got together, they would be way too good for doubles players,’” Macpherson told me. “I used to get that with the Bryan brothers a lot. But the fact that Errani and Vavassori won just sort of highlighted that doubles players are just better at doubles. That was a nice validation for doubles players, it got them a little more respect.”

That respect is welcomed by doubles players and fans—especially if it leads to even greater exposure for the game.