Uh-oh, rain is in the forecast again for Florida, will we have another EDNR champion in 40+ 3.5?

It appears the USTA League Nationals "weather issue" edition is going to continue this coming weekend.

The 40 & over 3.5 men and women are scheduled to be in Fort Lauderdale, site of the weather delayed 40 & over 3.0 men and women from a couple weeks ago.  I just checked the weather and things don't look good.

Yes folks, that is a 100% and 90% chance of thunderstorms and rain this weekend.  Friday (not shown) is better, just cloudy and no rain expected, but if this forecast is accurate, the entire second day and semis/finals could be washed out.

When the last event there had rain, it resulted in 4-6 hour delays, modified scoring to start sets at 2-2 and play no-ad scoring, and matches played late into the night.  With the forecast above, it doesn't appear even those measures would allow them to get the matches in.

So what will be done?  I don't know but can guess/suggest a few things.

• Find indoor courts to use on Saturday and Sunday.  This wasn't done a few weeks ago though, so unclear if it is even an option.  If it is, this is probably the best one as it allows for normal matches, just probably on a different surface than planed (it was supposed to be on clay).
• If indoor courts aren't available, they will probably shorten the scoring format again and get as many matches in Friday as possible and hope there is a window to finish up over the weekend.  The weather report makes this appear unlikely to work though.
• As an extreme measure, they could go some sort of ultra short scoring format, say playing super tie-breaks for each match, and try to get the whole thing in on Friday.  I'd guess this is unlikely though.
• Another unlikely option would be to offer teams the option to come early (Thursday is sunny) or stay late (forecast for Monday is fine) to get the matches in.  This probably is not reasonable given the logistics and travel involved for what could be 34 teams.

For those headed to Orlando for 55+ 6.0 and 8.0, I'm not ignoring you, but your forecast for 60% and 40% rain over the weekend is not nearly as dire, but you may still end up having a shortened scoring format at some point.

We can cross our fingers and hope the forecast is wrong, but this seems to be a disaster waiting to happen in Fort Lauderdale, worse than what happened in Mobile last weekend where 8 co-champions were declared for what should be been 3 championship events due to Sunday being rained out.  If they can't even finish flight play, would the USTA consider naming all the mathematically still eligible teams to win a flight co-champions?  That could be on the order of 12 teams per event of 24 teams!

I'm reaching out to anyone I know that is going to the event to see what the USTA is telling them, but it should sure be a bummer to travel thousands of miles to not even get to finish play in your flight.  If you are planning to go, please comment with what you've heard from the USTA.

The good news is, I have a solution for naming a single National Champ should they not get to finish.  I've come up with the Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating (EDNR) National Champion where using my estimated ratings and real (where possible) line-ups, I simulate each match to determine who advances or ultimately is the winner so we can have the satisfaction of naming a winner.

I'm working on identifying the EDNR champs for Mobile now, lets hope I don't have to do it for Fort Lauderdale this weekend!