Within three months of initiating the round-robin format in selected ATP tournaments, the men's body has voted to end the experiment, a press release said on Friday.
The remaining events who had initially volunteered for the round-robin format will now revert to the original knock out competition.
The ATP had begun testing several versions of the format at lower level events this year following initial research that indicated it could be a measure to provide significant growth to the game.
The research showed it was popular among casual fans because it gave them more opportunity to see their local and favorite players than in a traditional knockout format. The format also had the added benefit of allowing tournaments to showcase their marquee players deeper into the tournament week and made TV scheduling of matches easier to promote.
However, the carefully monitored testing at the five test case events this year raised a number of concerns and weaknesses that were not apparent from desk research.
The 32-player hybrid format caused confusion; second, resolving who would progress from the round robin stage with 3 men groups was often complicated; and third, sections of the media had difficulty in reporting round robin and consequently fans not at the event had difficultly in following early results.
The voices against the round-robin format gained momentum when James Blake went out of the Las Vegas Open was reinstated and then eliminated again, all in 24 hours. The withdrawal of Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro in the league stage had led to the confusion.
"It was a good experiment and we learned a lot from it. Some experiments will work and others won't, but we will keep trying to find new and better ways of growing the appeal of men's professional tennis," said ATP Chairman and President Etienne de Villiers.
The top two players in the world, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, along with some others were not in favour of the experiment right from the beginning.
"Well, I was against it from the start." Federer had said before the start of the Masters Series in Indian Wells two weeks ago. "You know, I'm not at all in favor of it. I think it's never gonna happen, but maybe one player helps another player to get maybe the top guy out, who then eventually could win the whole tournament, the whole thing. "
