Like most sports, tennis clings to its rules and traditions, its mores and peculiarities—proudly, you might say, even stubbornly. And why not? The game has been embraced worldwide, by men and by women. An estimated fourteen million people in China play tennis regularly, up from one million twenty years ago. There is now an annual stop on the women’s tour in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. But tennis, like baseball, has a creeping sense of itself as being a bit ossified, too slow for our speeded-up times. Are the sets too long? Are the matches too long? Is all of the in-between time—the warming up, the moment or two before a player serves—too long? And, while we’re at it, is there room in this essentially Victorian game for a little more show-biz pizzazz? 2017 may well be remembered as the year pro tennis began to experiment with ways to make the game . . . what, exactly? More fan-friendly. Or TV-friendly. Or more engaging for millennials. Or faster, anyway.

In August, during the week of qualifying matches that preceded the main-draw events at the U.S. Open, a twenty-five-second countdown clock between points was introduced, and the warmup time for players was limited to five minutes. In September, in Prague, at the first-ever Laver Cup—a two-team exhibition tournament, Europeans versus the Rest of the World, spearheaded by Roger Federer, to honor the seventy-nine-year-old Australian great Rod Laver—all matches tied after two sets were decided by a brisk, first-to-ten-points-by-two “super tiebreak.” And last week, in Milan, at the inaugural Next Gen A.T.P. Finals, an event designed to showcase young talent on the men’s side, in an era that continues to be dominated by Federer and Rafael Nadal, the top male players aged twenty-one or younger became lab subjects for perhaps the largest sanctioned series of experiments in the Open era history of pro tennis.

Could it have gotten off to a worse start? Maybe not. At the draw ceremony, to group the eight players for the three days of round-robin matches that would begin the tourney, the A.T.P. and the event’s sponsor, Red Bull, did away with simply drawing chips and went the Silvio Berlusconi route instead: on a fashion runway with cheesy Europop cranked to eleven, the young players were instructed to select from a gaggle of models who had either the letter “A” or “B” somewhere on their bodies. There ensued dress hiking, booty shaking, de Sade-esque glove removal, and simulated lap dancing. The players mostly winced and looked at their shoe tops. A firestorm on Twitter subsequently prompted an official apology.

Less cringeworthy, but not exactly riveting, was the introduction of audible chat between players and coaches, who, in between sets, communicated with each other via headsets, which were hooked up so that TV viewers could listen in. If you were hoping, as I was, for strategic or tactical insights, forget it. Coaches stuck to the kind of talk you get from a club coach: mix it up, pounce on that second serve, believe. The young Canadian Denis Shapovalov, who won over fans at this year’s U.S. Open with his on-court passion and charm, had the Next Gen’s best heart-to-heart with a coach. He couldn’t believe how good the coffee in Milan was! “Dude, I’m telling you,” he informed his coach, Martin Laurendeau. “Best coffee I’ve ever had in my life!”

The tournament was held at the Fiera Milano, which is normally given over to trade fairs, and the lighting was theatrical in the Vegas style that has lately been perfected by N.B.A. arenas. The place was packed all week, and, judging purely from what the TV cameras showed, the attendees were younger than the typical tennis-match crowd. The lone court, stylishly slate gray in a pool of aqua, had no doubles alleys; the tournament was singles only. The simplified design, and the contrast between the spotlit court and the darkened stands, heightened the sense that the players were onstage, and somehow intensified both one’s understanding of how far today’s players are drawn wide by sharp-angled, deep-bouncing, topspin-loaded shots, and how confining a tennis court can be: so many balls land out by so little.

Those out calls were given over fully to modern technology: there were no line judges, just Hawk-Eye. The computerized system, with its cameras and software visually tracking the ball, also ruled serves in and out, and officiated on foot faults, with a recorded voice instantly announcing the call. That this should become standard for all tennis matches at the pro level and beyond seems a no-brainer. Tennis has been using Hawk-Eye for a generation to overrule line judges on calls, so why not do away with the judges altogether, and have six or seven fewer people crowding around the court, attempting to track 100-m.p.h.-plus hits?

There was still a chair umpire for each match; his biggest role appeared to be calling balls out that were way out—Hawk-Eye only tracks balls within two metres of the lines—and setting the twenty-five-second countdown clock between points. (The umpire paused benevolently before getting it going after particularly gruelling points.) In the third set of the first match of the tournament, the veteran chair ump Carlos Bernandes yelled “Let” as a serve flicked off the tape and landed in the service box—an ordinary enough occurrence, except that one of the Next Gen speed-it-up experiments was to play such serves, as college rules have had players do for years. Bernandes had momentarily forgotten. There were laughs all around at the botched call, and the point was replayed, but it became clear during the course of the tournament that the players did not enjoy chasing these serves. It’s hard enough to break serve in the men’s game today without having to worry about a ball that glances off the net.

Another change implemented last year in N.C.A.A. tennis was the elimination of deuce—a scoring system, gentlemanly in its origins, that embraces the notion that winning by two points is the fair way to break a tie. Collegiate games that reach 40–40 now end with one deciding point. It’s a system that’s also been used for some years in men’s and women’s doubles on the pro tour, and it did keep the matches moving in Milan, where no-ad scoring was being tried for the first time in singles. Interestingly and, to me, counterintuitively, the receivers dominated these deciders in the half-dozen matches I watched, even though the server got to choose which side of the court he wanted to serve to. But, then, the players were young and not capable, at least not yet, of precisely blasting 125-m.p.h. serves under pressure.

The most radical experiment was in the format of sets: four games to win, not six, with a tiebreak at three-all. Even though the matches were best-of-five sets, this got things over in a hurry: three- and four-setters in under two hours, those going the distance lasting maybe twenty minutes longer. Did it increase the entertainment value of the matches? I’m not sure. But it clearly raised the stress level of a number of the Next Gen phenoms. The twenty-year-old Andrey Rublev, of Russia, was the tournament’s No. 1 seed, having risen this season to No. 37 in the A.T.P. world rankings on the strength of a resounding forehand that, with the help of extraordinary footwork, he is able to launch in any direction from anywhere along the baseline. (The best twenty-one-and-under men’s player, Sascha Zverev, had such a fine season, entering the men’s Top Five, that he qualified for the A.T.P. Finals being played this week in London and chose to skip Milan.) But it was clear that the quick-to-arrive, three-all tiebreaks, and the deciding points at 40–40, rattled Rublev. In the final, on Saturday, during such pressure situations, he could barely put a first serve in, which led him to toss his racquet and, at one point, squeeze his pale, peach-fuzzed face to fend off tears.

The tournament was won, instead, by Hyeon Chung, a muscular, bespectacled South Korean twenty-one-year-old. This result would have seemed surprising when the tourney began—he was the sixth seed, and he has battled heel and ankle injuries for much of the year—but no one who spent the week watching could have been caught off guard. Chung is a counterpuncher, able to get a quick jump on balls headed his way, change direction with Djokovic-like balance and fluidity, and keep himself in points for long stretches of time by fighting the urge to go for too much too soon. He didn’t lose a match in Milan, coming from behind three times, and never once donned his headset between sets to consult with his coach. That’s mental toughness, which is worth having whatever the format, and whatever the future holds.