Bill Simmons says tennis matches are too long

Too much of a good thing is not a good thing when it comes to tennis matches according to Bill Simmons.

We have seen a trend of sports trying to shorten their game times in recent years, catering to shorter attention spans and increasing content competition. Major League Baseball implemented a series of changes including a pitch clock and the results have been tremendous for the sport as viewership increases and games no longer seem like an interminable slog.

And now with US Open matches going deep into the night, Simmons is asking for tennis to do the same. He argues that matches taking four-and-a-half hours to complete are far too long to keep anyone entertained.

@BillSimmons: Are tennis matches too long? pic.twitter.com/1HvrdAW0C1

— The Ringer (@ringer) September 7, 2026

“I’ve watched tennis my whole life. I’ve played tennis, I love tennis. Tennis matches are too long,” Simmons declared. “We’ve lost the narrative with this. These guys are too good. The rallies and the points, these matches are four-and-a-half hours routinely now. And I just think it’s absurd, and I’ve talked about this forever. I don’t think anything should be four-and-a-half hours. Literally anything, movies, sporting events, a dinner, anything. I don’t want to do anything for four-and-a-half hours that’s supposed to be entertainment.”

Of course, Bill Simmons knows this is going to be a molten hot take for tennis purists. However, he stuck to his guns, even suggesting that the sport shorten sets to get games completed in a reasonable time.

“All the tennis purists are going to be like, ‘that’s crazy, fck you, go fck yourself.’ I get it. But I think they should seriously think about changing the sets from six to five for winning the set… whatever we have to do to not make this four-and-a-half-hours. I just don’t think it’s that entertaining and I like tennis,” he added.

“The whole time I’m like ‘why the f*ck is this four-and-a-half-hours?’ It’s absurd. When the baseball games got too long, what did we do? We’re like this is too long, let’s get a pitch clock, we gotta fix this. In tennis it’s like Djokovic is about to have a stroke on the court, this is great! What drama, he’s dying. What’s fun about this?”

Novak Djokovic lost his opening round match at the US Open for the first time this year to unheralded youngster Mariano Navone in a match that lasted 4 hours, 36 minutes. That marathon saw the legend visibly struggle with his physical state. The longer matches have definitely had an impact on the schedule for this year’s tournament with multiple evening sessions going well past midnight. Venus Williams didn’t even begin her first round match (which she also lost after receiving a wild card entry) until 12:13 a.m. local time in New York. That shouldn’t make sense for anybody.

But in case you’re wondering whether this is just vibes from The Sports Guy or if there’s actually data to back up his assessment, what he’s saying is factually correct. In 2023, The Athletic published data from the ATP that showed grand slam matches averaging 2:21 in 1999 compared to 2:54 in 2023. And just yesterday Botic van de Zandschulp defeated Arthur Gea in a match that lasted 5:13 to reach the quarterfinals.

You can understand where Bill Simmons is coming from. Our brains are not conditioned to sit in one place for almost five hours and stay committed to one thing in 2026. Add in the fact that top-level tennis has largely become one long baseline rally after another and it’s easy to see how it might become monotonous. But whereas baseball was able to find some reasonable fixes that were easy to implement, it’s more difficult to see where tennis can do the same without making fundamental changes to the sport.

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