World Tennis League's third season kicks off Thursday with exciting new format

NEW DELHI: The third season of the World Tennis League (WTL) kicks off Thursday in Abu Dhabi, featuring a unique format where the top two teams with the highest number of games will advance to the final on December 22.
The tournament will follow a single round-robin format, with each team playing one match against every other team.
The season opener will see the Game Changers Falcons, featuring stars like Elena Rybakina and Andrey Rublev, take on the TSL Hawks, led by Women’s World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka and India’s Sumit Nagal.
Each match will comprise four sets: men’s singles, women’s singles, and two doubles sets, which may include men’s doubles, women’s doubles, or mixed doubles. The team winning the coin toss will choose the doubles format for the match.
WTL introduces an innovative rule where, if the trailing team wins the fourth set, the match will move into overtime (OT).
In OT, play continues until the leading team wins one more game or the trailing team ties the overall game total. If the game scores are level after OT, the match will be decided by a Super Shootout.
The same players who contested the fourth set will participate in the Super Shootout, where the first to reach 10 points wins, with sudden death at 9-9. The winner of the Super Shootout will earn one additional game and two bonus points.