Rain rain stay away! Fingers crossed, 40 & over 3.5 USTA League Nationals may finish in Ft. Lauderdale

Day one of USTA League Nationals for 40 & over 3.5 men and women is in the books and rain and associated delays was avoided.  Well, that was expected as the forecast for Friday was good, it is the Saturday forecast that is alarming.

It has called for an 80-100% chance of thunderstorms all week, and still does as of now, but it appears it may hold off until noon.  This would give them about four hours to get matches in.

But how can they fit a full day of matches into four hours?

The USTA did make the right move and reschedule as many matches as possible from Saturday to Friday.  This means that every team played two matches Friday, normally a number of teams would play just once Friday and twice Saturday.  However, flight one for the men and women are five team flights and every team will have two matches to play on Saturday to complete round-robin play, and the other flights all have a match per team to play meaning 11 team matches for both men and women, or 22 team matches, must be played.

The big challenge with be the five team flights as only four can play at a time meaning it takes three "time-slots" to get them all in.  Nationals matches, especially in singles, can end up taking 2+ hours, so three time-slots would be 6+ hours.  Just doing the math, 7:30 plus 6 hours is 1:30 pm which is well into the window when the storm is due to hit.  And that would still mean two teams would be playing back to back with no rest between matches.

To try and give them a chance, they will be going to a short format as they did for the rain delayed event in Ft. Lauderdale two weeks ago with the goal of keeping matches to one hour.  The shortened format is to start each set at 2-2 and play no-ad rather than playing out the deuces.  Many areas play no-ad during the year, but starting at 2-2 is certainly different and puts a priority on starting quickly.  It has the potential for changing who wins, particularly as it takes fitness out of the equation a bit.

For the sake of the players to took the time and money to make the trip, lets hope they get it in so they can play the semis and final on Sunday as scheduled.  While Sunday had as high as an 80% chance of rain, it now appears to be just 20% so perhaps rain won't be an issue then.

Good luck everyone!