Djokovic Wants Four-Game Sets and Matches Under Two Hours
The world number five wants sets played to four games, no advantage at 40-40, and matches that fit inside two hours. He floated the idea on camera, ahead of the next leg of his American swing.
The camera rolls and the question comes without a warmup: what would you defend to the end, even when everyone else is against you. Nick Koutrakos, who built the Nick Knows Ball account on small details and on players only the hardcore fans still remember, might have expected an answer about rivalries or about who is the greatest of all time. Novak Djokovic went somewhere else entirely. He aimed straight at the scoring system, at the rules he has played his entire career under.
He laid out the proposal calmly, like something he had been mulling for a long time.
“I think tennis needs a new scoring system, sets shouldn’t be played to six games. I believe a set should be played to four games, with the possible elimination of the ‘advantage’ rule at 40-40.”
He did not stop there. The part that would reshape an entire tournament day came right after.
“Matches would be played until someone won three of these shortened sets. That way, matches wouldn’t last longer than two hours, which, in my opinion, is best for everyone.”
The conversation was filmed for Instagram, in a format with nothing in common with a post-match press conference. The question was which controversial tennis opinion he would defend to the end, and the answer took on that tone.
What Would a Four-Game Set Mean in Practice?
It would mean a single break almost always decides the set. At six games, an opponent has room to come back, to wait for the other side’s serve to slip first, to steal a game at 4-5 and stretch things out. At four games, that room disappears. A set would run about fifteen minutes, and a player who starts cold loses it before they ever warm up.
Scrapping advantage at 40-40 points the same way. Instead of trading advantage and deuce back and forth, the game would come down to a single point, with the returner choosing the side. That strips some weight off the serve, since today’s best servers win the most in the long games on their own serve.
Three sets to win still means a maximum of five sets, so the longest possible match would run around twenty games instead of today’s thirty-something in Grand Slam format. That’s where the two-hour ceiling comes from.
Why Is He the One Asking?
Because on paper, he stands to lose the most from this proposal. Djokovic built his career on matches nobody else could survive. The 2012 Australian Open final against Rafael Nadal lasted five hours and 53 minutes and remains the longest Grand Slam final in history. Seven years later, in the Wimbledon final against Roger Federer, he saved two match points and won after nearly five hours. A shortened format would strip him of exactly the weapon he used against everyone.
Tennis, for that matter, didn’t just invent this experiment. The Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan have used an almost identical format since 2017: sets to four games, no advantage at deuce, a tiebreak at 3-3, and matches decided by three sets won. The difference is that there it’s tested on players under 21, while Djokovic is proposing it become the rule for everyone.
Fifth in the Rankings, but With a Full Calendar
In the ATP rankings dated August 3, 2026, Djokovic sits fifth with 3,760 points. Ahead of him:
- Jannik Sinner, 13,450 points
- Carlos Alcaraz, 8,160
- Alexander Zverev, 8,120
- Felix Auger-Aliassime, 4,740
Among other Serbian players, Miomir Kecmanovic is 62nd with 925 points, Hamad Medjedovic 73rd with 844, Dusan Lajovic 149th with 378, and Laslo Djere 207th with 268 points.
He continues his season at the Masters event in Cincinnati, which starts August 13, then moves on to the US Open starting August 30. The year’s last Grand Slam still plays by the old rules: best of five sets to six games, with advantage scoring, and matches that can run past four hours.
The proposal won’t pass, at least not like this and not soon. Tennis changes its rules slowly, typically testing them at junior level first, and Grand Slam tournaments thrive on exactly the marathons this format would eliminate. But when the man with the most Grand Slam titles in history says a match should fit inside two hours, that stops being a marketing line and becomes a question the ATP will eventually have to answer. The first chance to ask him about it comes in Cincinnati, a week from now.
