Could Thirty 30 be padel’s answer to Twenty20 cricket?

Could padel emulate Twenty20 cricket and launch its own short-format franchise competition? Scotsman Mark Milne believes his Thirty 30 concept offers the perfect template.

The Thirty30 scoring system – now a trademarked brand – is broadly the same as tennis and padel’s traditional format, but with several key differences:

• Each game starts at 30-30 (“thirty-thirty” – the clue is in the name!) instead of love-all
• Players change ends after the first two games, then every four thereafter
• Players/tournament organisers can choose a golden, silver or bronze deuce system (i.e. a sudden death point on the first, second or third deuce to win the game.)
• If a set reaches 6-6, a nine-point tie-break is played, with sudden death at 4-4

Originally devised six years ago for tennis, Mark is now focused on and gaining traction for his idea within padel.

After conducting an analysis of the recent Hexagon Cup, Mark’s data from Madrid shows an average set duration of 44 minutes and match duration of 98 minutes (even with its two golden point tie-break sets and third set super tie-break format to 10 points).

“Padel has the same problem as tennis – matches are lasting too long with too many dead points,” Mark tells The Padel Paper. “Thirty30 brings a faster-moving format with no dead points or quieter periods. It is high intensity, more dynamic, ultra-competitive and extremely exciting.

“Every second point played is a game point, so the game scores tick over very quickly and there are more big points. Even with the bronze deuce format, the maximum number of points in a game is seven.

“We’ve also reduced change of ends by a factor of two. Does sitting down after every two games slow the game down for padel fans? I’d say yes. In our format, all four players serve before the change of ends. We believe it ticks a lot of boxes.”

Mark is a full-time mechanical design engineer from north-east Scotland who has worked in the oil and gas industry for 30 years. He played tennis, squash, badminton and table tennis to county level and latterly plays a lot of Touchtennis.

Frustrated at not being able to finish tennis matches within the hour’s booked court time, he started experimenting with shorter scoring formats. He remembered that coaches from his junior days used to practise playing ‘big points’ by starting at 30-30 and decided to adapt and expand that idea into an innovative new format.

Tennis has experimented with concepts such as Fast4, Tie-Break Tens and UTS, so the need to speed things up to suit viewers’ ever-reducing attention spans is being widely acknowledged.

The vision is to create Thirty30 tennis and padel franchise competitions like the highly successful Indian Premier League where players are bought in the draft.

Mark and business partner Michael Reynolds (an ex professional tennis player who is currently based in the UK to work on the project) have created the Thirty30 International Sports Group to formalise and promote their concept.

Mark (pictured above) and Michael have promoted Thirty30 at club level and have collected 300 positive testimonials from players who love this new scoring system. They have contacts all around the world excited about and promoting their unique format.

“The beauty of Thirty 30 is that it respects everything about tennis and padel traditions – you still end up winning a match 6-3, 7-6 etc, says Mark. “Long matches have to stay as the ultimate test in Grand Slams, but there’s definitely room for a short-format addition to the calendar.

“As it has done in cricket, it will give the sport a whole new dimension. We want to revolutionise racquet sports and unleash a new era of fast, thrilling action, where every point really counts! We believe Thirty30 is the future of racquet sports.”

Read more: Time to ditch padel’s medieval scoring system?