Ecclestone almost took over tennis - report

Mar.26 (GMM) Bernie Ecclestone has revealed how close he came to changing forever the international game of tennis.

Sportsvibe reports that the F1 chief executive led a consortium including legend Boris Becker and former player turned businessman Ion Tiriac that wanted to take over the game a decade ago.

Ecclestone, who said the trio came "very close" to running tennis, said the International Tennis Federation ultimately asked for "too much money".

"I argued that the sport needed to be better geared towards television," he said.

"We would have introduced one serve only per point and also a timed cut-off point to a match so that everyone knew, especially the TV companies, how long a match would last.

"Another idea we had was to segment the match into two or three, timed parts of, say, 20 minutes each. I admit it was radical but the sport needed to do something, although it has improved a little since our talks," he added.