The NCAA approved a change beginning Sept. 1. 2012, where all warmups before the singles and doubles will be removed, as well as changeover timeouts reduced to 60 seconds. Also, doubles matches will be changed to one 6 game set, and singles matches will be 2 out of 3 sets, with a super tiebreaker to 10 for the third.

If this decision is upheld and the players are forced to adhere to them, it will kill the college game as it is now. You will have more players skipping college tennis to go to the professional level, as college tennis will no longer prepare you for the professional tour.

Gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. Many college tennis players at the D1 level have mentioned boycotting college tennis this year in protest. As much as I would hate to have that happen from a spectators standpoint, I would not blame them one bit for protesting. The NCAA has once again overstepped its boundaries, and it is time for the athletes and coaches to stand up to the organization.

Sounds to me like somebody in the NCAA had too much time on their hands. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Seriously, what's the motivation behind these changes - obviously cutting some time but why?

They want to appeal more to tv, mainly in the NCAA championships. I have heard from someone tied to texas college tennis that a certain former A&M coach is at the head of this movement.

This is very interesting indeed...

My observations:

1) TV usually only plays these things on tape delay anyway. I doubt these are the changes that will make that not happen. Commercial breaks, anybody?
2) Most fans who show up in person stay for doubles and leave. Those people aren't going to be persuaded to stay for another two hours of singles by cutting down the warmup times by a few minutes.

Awful, Awful changes.
Can't imagine this will stick w/ the petitions that have immediately started up. Just a glorified rec league w/ these changes.

I don't care for these changes. The reason given was to make these matches more TV-friendly. I want college tennis to be featured on TV as much or more than the next guy, but I don't think this is the way to do it.

Shortening matches just allows for more luck and randomness in matches.

Absolutely horrible. NCAA people must be really bored and uninformed.

Funny how they want to shorten an already shortened doubles format.

I think it will get overturned. John Roddick wrote about it on the facebook page this morning

What are the odds of them ever showing a live college match anyway? Just film it in its entirety and show 2 hours worth!

They showed it a week tape delayed for the finals for years, and then went to live 2/3 years back, then went completely away from it on tv last year.

Hell, most schools have live streaming these days anyways.

By the way, #savecollegetennis is/was trending on twitter earlier.

NCAA

Terrible, just continues to show where Men's Tennis ranks in the hierarchy of NCAA sports. Goes along with it being the only sport where there's not enough scholarships to cover starting players.

Welcome to the board Pat, good to see you here.

And the NCAA reconsiders the tiebreaker rule, and it and the shortened sets in doubles will NOT be played this year. The warmup and changeover timeout changes will be.

Thanks for the update