Former professional football player Gerard Pique called for some big changes to be made to tennis.
Pique made a name for himself as one of the best centre backs in world football, and won various honours including the World Cup, Champions League and La Liga.
Football is not the only sport that Pique has been involved with, as the Spaniard’s company Kosmos partnered with the ITF in 2018 and caused the widely criticised Davis Cup format.
This partnership was terminated in 2023, but Pique was still wanting big changes to be made to tennis.
Gerard Pique called for tennis to remove both second serves and deuces
Pique appeared on the podcast of his former Spain and Barcelona teammate Iker Casillas, which saw them speak about various different topics.
While most of their conversation obviously related to football, Pique and Casillas also spoke about tennis.
This was when Pique called for tennis to scrap both second serves and the use of deuce, claiming there should be a deciding point at 40-40 instead, calling the current scoring system ‘a waste of time’.
“Cancel the two serve attempts in tennis and make it one and cancel Deuce and make it a golden point,” said Pique. “People don’t want to watch the player bouncing the ball and playing repeated serves.”
Pique continued, “If you miss the first serve, it’s a point for the opponent. Why serve twice in tennis? Think about it, it takes 30 seconds longer, where you see a player bouncing the ball while waiting to serve. People don’t want to see that, they want to see the point, not a five-minute game where one player has an advantage, then the other has an advantage, then 40-40 and so on.
“All of this is just a waste of time. I’m not saying we need to make radical changes in tennis, I’m simply proposing that things adapt to the speed at which everything else evolves, otherwise tennis will be completely outdated.”
While deuce and advantage scoring is still mainly used, doubles matches on both the ATP and WTA Tours do use deciding point like Pique wants for singles matches too.
Gerard Pique receives backlash for his comments about tennis
Although this podcast was put into the public domain over nine months ago, these comments from Pique are now resurfacing on social media.
With there still a lot of frustration at how Pique had already changed tennis through the Davis Cup, the Spaniard has now received even more backlash.
One person on X (formerly known as Twitter) wrote, “Omg he’s still at it years later?? Why does he think he’s an expert on tennis? He ruined Davis Cup and now wants to ruin the whole sport.”
Another person added, “Yuck! He better stick to the sport he knows.”
Someone else pointed out that many of the classic matches from over the years would not have been as thrilling if it were not for the deuce scoring format.
“If not for Deuce, we would never have had the pleasure of watching prime [Rafae] Nadal and [Novak] Djokovic battle it out for 6 hours straight in the Australian Open final.”
The frustration towards Pique continued, “I feel like this hombre has probably done enough damage to tennis already.”
Another social media user turned Pique’s quotes around on him, and questioned many of the rules in football which also extend the length of play.
“Who needs extra time? Why have 5 penalty kickers? Make the field a quarter of the size. People don’t want to see a lot of standing around for 90 minutes.”
It seems as though most of the frustration towards Pique’s comments comes from his call to remove deuce and advantage, rather than the call to remove second serves.
However, it does not seem as though either of these things are likely to happen in the near future.
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