It's Happening - Unbroken 2-2 ties occur more often than you think in 4-court matches, who is declared the winner?

We are a month into 2020 and with it, quite a few 40 & Over leagues have started and with that, we are seeing more data on the new 4-court format as most sections are adopting it for play this year.

Now, some have moved to Points per Position (PPP) rather than sticking with team wins for standings, and for those, they are avoiding the issues of what happens when matches end in 2-2 ties and the tie-breakers are not sufficient and don't break the tie.  But many have stuck with wins and losses for standings and as I predicted, we are seeing quite a few unbroken ties.

As of the writing of this blog post, I have found 10 instances of recent unbroken ties in 2020 leagues playing 4 courts and using teams wins for standings.  So what happens in this case?

The documented regulations are not entirely clear.  They state that if tied 2-2, the fewest sets lost is used, then fewest games lost, and then game winning percentage (GWP).  The implication is that it is the GWP from the match, which interestingly is meaningless at that point as if both teams have lost the same number of games, they've won the same number too and the GWP for each is 50%.

Now, what is odd is that on TennisLink, when looking at a team match, the GWP shown does not correlated with the team match, instead it seems to be showing the GWP for each team for the season.  If the season GWP is used as a last step to break a tie, that would optimistically be "interesting", but when you think about it is really somewhat troubling.

But I've also heard or been told that as a last tie-breaker, TennisLink will award the win to the visiting team.  No wait, the home team.  No wait, ...  What?

I have not had this 100% confirmed, but I "think" it used to be the visiting team that was awarded the win, the rationale being they managed a tie despite being at a disadvantage as the visiting team, so give them the win.  However, I "think" this has been changed to award the win to the home team now, which doesn't make sense to me, but ok.

Note, it is possible that individual sections/areas have established their own local tie-breakers to use or even to have ties (half wins), although I don't think TennisLink has the flexibility to handle that so this would be handled manually and TennisLink wouldn't show the correct standings.

So what is actually happening?  Given there have been what appear to be unbroken 2-2 ties, we can take a look and try to deduce what happened.  Here is what I've found:

• SoCal / Ventura - Match played 1/11/2020, both teams lost 4 sets and 33 games.  Winning team was the visitor who happened to have the higher GWP for the season.
• SoCal / San Diego - Match played 1/15/2020, both teams lost 4 sets and 38 games.  Winning team was the visitor who happened to have the higher GWP for the season.
• Missouri Valley / HOA - Match played 2/1/2020, both teams lost 4 sets and 38 games.  Winning team was the home team who happened to have the higher GWP for the season.
• SoCal / San Diego - Match played 1/26/2020, both teams lost 5 sets and 41 games.  Winning team was the visitor who happened to have the higher GWP for the season.
• SoCal / San Diego - Match played 2/3/2020, both teams lost 5 sets and 49 games.  Winning team was the home team who happened to have the higher GWP for the season.
• Florida / Broward - Match played 1/29/2020, both teams lost 5 sets and 41 games.  Winning team was the visitor who happened to have the higher GWP for the season.
• SoCal / SGV - Match played 1/11/2020, both teams lost 4 sets and 37 games.  Winning team was the visitor who happened to have the higher GWP for the season.  The thing is, at the time of the match, it was each team's first match so they had no GWP!
• Southern / Georgia - Match played 1/26/2020, both teams lost 5 sets and 39 games.  Winning team was the visitor even though their GWP for the season was higher.

There are more I have found and they don't add much more.  From the above, I can't say that the home team gets the win or the visitor gets the win, or if the season GWP is used in some way.

If the season GWP is used, that seems completely broken for several reasons:

• If it is the season GWP at the time of the match, this penalizes the team who came in with the tougher schedule
• If it is the current season GWP, which is what seems to be shown on TennisLink team matches, this makes no sense since as the season goes along, the GWP changes and does that mean the team match winner could change?

So I can't imagine season GWP is used, but I could be wrong.

If it isn't used, perhaps it was given to the visiting team through the end of January, but the change I've heard about to giving it to the home team was made in February and that is what is happening now.  That does correlate with the above, but seems a bit sketchy.  But you never know.

What have you observed as it related to 2-2 ties?  Or what has your League Coordinator told you?  Let's figure this out!