Alix Ramsay Shares Her Wit And Wisdom About The ATP Next Gen Tennis 2018 In Milan • Towel Anyone?

You cannot stop progress – and why would you want to? It’s progress that keeps us all alive, every last one of us. Every species must evolve, develop and adapt or it will die. To stand still is to risk extinction. Look at the woolly mammoth: it never got the hang of the iPad and where is it now? And let’s not get started on the dodo.

 

But progress is never easy. We humans love to invent things but, deep down, we are wary of change. Tradition is safe and comforting. To beat this fear, the innovators have to be clever and the smart people have learned to try out their new-fangled ideas on those who cannot really complain.

 

If you have a vague grasp of British history, think of Margaret Thatcher and the ill-fated poll tax. Working on the theory that nobody in Scotland ever voted Conservative and so that if it proved unpopular, it would not harm the party’s election prospects, she tried out this tax on the Scots. And, boy, was it unpopular. But by this point, Mrs T was past her prime and stubbornly refusing to give up on her idea, she rolled the tax out across England and Wales. By the end of that year (1990, if you are interested), she had been forced to resign as Prime Minister and the Thatcher era was over.

 

Without wishing to liken Chris Kermode to Margaret Thatcher (he doesn’t suit a twin-set and pearls and has never been one for a handbag), he, too, is trying out new ideas on those without much of a voice. For those young stars under the age of 21, those who stand with their noses pressed to the window of the ATP World Tour Finals and wonder what it must be like to play there, he has given them their own showcase tournament.

 

Launched last year, the Next Gen Finals is a taste of the big time for the stars in waiting. There you go lads, the future is all yours – but before you get there, there are a few things we would like you to try. Like four game sets. And shot clocks. And, this year, an all-singing-and dancing video review system. Oh, and towel rails at the back of the court. The Next Gen Finals is like a huge petri dish into which the ATP pours all its ideas and gimmicks and then waits to see if anything grows.

 

The video review will be used as many times as a player requests it and will be called in for the more complicated challenges like double hits, double bounces, touches or the fabulously named “invasion” offence (any part of the player, his clothing or racket touching the opponent’s side of the court while the ball is still in play).

 

Using the current Hawk-Eye technology together with the available TV footage, some poor sap gets the job of wading through every bit of coverage to send the correct angle to the umpire via his tablet (see – mammoths would have been hopeless at this) and then the ump can make a final decision. The hope is that every bone of contention can be resolved by this super-duper video system.

 

If it works, it could be a game changer. If it works, we will all want one. Picture the scene: Bloke is out shopping with his Other Half. She is looking for a new dress. He feels the cold sweat prickle the back of his neck. He will soon be forced to offer an opinion. He feels slightly sick.

 

Other Half bursts out of the changing room. “Ta-dah!” she trills, packed tightly into a little, bright red number. “What do you think? Does my bum look big in this?” Bloke sees his life flash before his eyes. “Ummmm….” he says. And in that moment of hesitation, all is lost. “FAULT” bellows a disembodied voice from the shop’s public address. “Challenge,” he mumbles weakly. “You do,” Other Half snaps. “You do. You think my backside looks huge in this. I can see it in your eyes.” “No, I just meant… I was going to say that it looks lovely on you but so did the blue one you tried on before. And the green one before that. And the flowery one before that.”

 

At this point, the shop manager appears with an iPad and reviews the CCTV footage of Other Half parading in all four frocks. With the aid of a ruler, a protractor and a pocket calculator, he assesses the acreage of Other Half’s nether regions and the visual impact of said regions when wrapped in frocks of red, blue, green and floral print. Other Half’s derriere is, indeed, ill-suited to the red frock and the shop manager decides in favour of Bloke. Bloke lives to suffer another shopping trip on another day. This technology could really work.

 

The towel rails, though, could be less of a success. The idea is to relieve the ball kids of the onerous duty of handing the players their soggy towels between points. But whoever came up with this grand plan had not thought it through. These are young men we are taking about, all of them aged under 21. Yes, they are all highly paid, fairly famous and completely cocooned in their own little tennis world, but we must not forget that they are, first and foremost, boys. And boys are inherently untidy. It’s a genetic thing like refusing to ask for directions when they are lost or exaggerating the symptoms of the common cold (man ‘flu – the disease that science could never identify).

 

It is true that the likes of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray have always been organised and neat in their use of the towel for a post-rally dab down but they are all long married men. OK, Rafa is not actually married but he and his partner, Xisca Perello, have been together for more than a dozen years. All of them know that their lives would not be worth living if they dropped towels on the bathroom floor, left their clothes in crumpled heaps in the bedroom and filed used dishes on the carpet by the couch – the Mirkas, Jelenas, Xiscas and Kims of this world would make sure of that. Our established heroes have all been well trained; the Next Gen are still rookies in, oh, so many ways.

 

Getting this generation of superstars-to-be to collect their own towels from the rack is one thing; getting them to put them back in a tidy and orderly fashion is quite another.

 

Think of the years of practice that have gone into that nonchalant flick of the soggy rag back to the ball boy or girl, that casual toss of the towel in the general direction of the recipient achieved while looking in the opposite direction and walking away. Perfecting that art is as an important part of a player’s repertoire as a decent forehand or a solid return. Now, though, they will have to put the towel back where they found it.

 

Of course, the ATP could do a deal with the manufacturers of those roller towels you find in public bathrooms, the ones that always jam and leave a long, damp and deeply unattractive length of overused cotton dangling from the mechanism. But that really would not be a good look.

 

Then there are the various types of towel user: the dabbers, the flannellers, the wipers – everyone uses the towel differently. The dabbers take the towel to help them with their thought process – ‘that backhand isn’t working. Time for something new’. And as he thinks this through, he gives a cursory wipe to his furrowed brow. Murray is a dabber.

 

Rafa “Two Towels” Nadal, though, is a real flanneller. He takes the business of drying off very seriously. He heads for the baseline equipped with armfuls of bathroom ware which he distributes at the back of the court to ensure that he is never more than a split second away from a good rub down.

 

All of this needs to be considered when designing the towel racks. Will the flannellers need two racks? Will the dabbers have their train of thought interrupted as they attempt to multi-task? And who changes the towels? Do you take your own towels out to the rack and reclaim them at the change of ends? It is an ablutionary minefield.

 

The ATP has been brave in its decisions around the Next Gen Finals. The video review may turn out to be a success but trying to turn eight young lads into organised, orderly men looks like mission impossible. Tidy towel racks maybe pushing progress one step too far.