Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 40 & Over 4.0 women

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 40 & Over 4.0 women which will be played the second weekend of Nationals.

This schedule looks reasonably random but as with others, there are some mini-pods.

Eastern, Southwest, and Texas all play each other, with Mid-Atlantic also playing Eastern and Texas.  Caribbean, Middle States, and Midwest all play each other, and then Southern, Northern, Missouri Valley, Florida, and Hawaii all play two or three matches against each other.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 40 & Over 4.0 men

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 40 & Over 4.0 men which will be played the second weekend of Nationals.

This schedule looks reasonably random but as with others, there are some mini-pods.

Southwest, Caribbean, and PNW all play each other, and Hawaii plays Southwest and PNW.  Northern, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic all play each other, as do Middle States, Texas, and Missouri Valley

Simulating 2022 USTA League Nationals - 18 & Over 3.5 Women

As I've done since 2018, I will be doing simulations of each Nationals to predict who the most likely four teams are to make the semi-finals, and also look at other interesting things that may occur.  In the years I've done this, the simulations have done a pretty good job predicting who would advance to the semis including having all four teams predicted correctly several times.

Why do these simulations you ask?  The primary reason is that the format for USTA League Nationals is now a flight-less random round-robin where each team plays four other random opponents.  This introduces significant variations in schedule strength, the possibility of an undefeated team not making the top-4, and teams vying for the top-4 perhaps not having played head-to-head and unfortunate tie-breakers being used.  The simulations aim to educate folks on how it all works and look at what may happen.  Also see this write-up for some things to know about Nationals.

Nationals is just getting going this weekend, the 18 & Over 3.5 event being held in Surprise, Arizona.  Here is what the simulation says is likely to happen for the Women's flight.

As a reminder, my simulations are done using my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings and looking at the average rating for the top group of players on each team, the actual schedule each team will play, and then doing a million simulations of the matches with some random variation in each team's expected result.

With 17 teams at the event the USTA never creates a schedule that can avoid more than four undefeated teams, and there is a chance of six undefeated (it happened in 46 of the million simulations) and a less than 1% chance of five undefeated.  There is a 13% chance of four undefeated, which isn't that high, which means it is very likely a 3-1 team and find their way in to the semis.

There is an 87% chance that there will be a tie for the last spot (4-0 or 3-1) and it come down to tie-breakers.  The most likely size of the tie is a 4 at 28%, five is 26%, and three is 17%.  The chances of larger ties diminish pretty quickly, but a 15-way tie is theoretically possible, but it appears a multi-way tie is a very high probability and it could be reasonably large.

Should there be a tie on team record, it comes down first to who has the best court record, then head-to-head (if applicable), then to who lost the fewest sets, then who lost the fewest games, and finally percent of games won.  There is a 28% chance it comes down to the sets lost tie-breaker, and there is a 64% chance that is between two teams and a pretty good 29% chance it is between three teams.  If the controversial tie-breakers are going to come into play, this is the likely spot.

The schedule strengths do vary a bit, but not as much as we see often, the team with the easiest schedule having an opponent average of 3.48 while the team with the toughest schedule having an opponent average of 3.57.  This leads to an easier road for some teams than others, one of the predicted semi-finalists getting there due to an easier schedule.

So who is most likely to come out in the top-4?  Florida, SoCal, Middle States, and Mid-Atlantic are solid choices, with a big group of 9 at 2-2 Texas, Caribbean, Norcal, and Eastern vying to break into the top-4.

For those interested, I offer a variety of reports to make Nationals more fun and help captains prepare.  I have a Simulation Report that has all of the details of the simulation including the average ratings for each team, each team's schedule strength, the most likely record for each team, and the chance of each possible record for each team.  I also offer reports to help teams scout opponents in more detail, both a Flight Report with full roster averages, top-8 averages and played by court averages for each team, as well as full Team Reports with detailed ratings for each rostered player and stats who who plays with who and on which court and how they do together.  Contact me if interested in any of these reports.

What happens if a team can't make it to USTA League Nationals?

Let me start this post by saying my thoughts and prayers go out to all those in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas who are having to deal with hurricane Ian.  I hope everyone is safe and those affected are able to recover quickly.

But, Nationals will go on and with keeping family and belongings safe being a higher priority than recreational tennis, and flights and other travel being disrupted, there is a chance some teams can't make it.  That begs the question of what happens to schedules and who plays who?

This has happened before where a team pulls out late after the schedule has been published, and it does get adapted.

One might think that since the schedule is random, removing a team would require redoing the whole schedule.  Thankfully, that has not been the case and the changes have been limited to a handful of teams.

For example, taking a hypothetical look at the 18 & Over 3.5 men to be played this weekend and starting tomorrow.  Should the Florida team not be able to make it here it was may happen.

Florida is scheduled to play Caribbean, Pacific Northwest, Missouri Valley, and Eastern.  So if they don't make it, these teams would all play only three matches.  The easy way to handle this is to just these teams play an additional match against each other.  PNW and MOValley already play each other so you don't want to have them play twice, but PNW could play Caribbean and MOValley play Eastern, and the schedule is otherwise preserved.

For the 3.5 women this weekend, Florida is scheduled to play Intermountain, Northern, New England, and MOValley.  Here Intermountain could play Northern and New England could play MOValley.

If two sections can't make it, it would get more complicated but a similar approach would likely be taken.

We'll see what happens, I'm sure the USTA is doing their best to help teams however they can and will adapt as needed.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 40 & Over 3.5 women

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 40 & Over 3.5 men which will be played the second weekend of Nationals.

This schedule looks reasonably random but as with others, there are some mini-pods.

Caribbean, Intermountain, and Northern all play each other, and Florida plays Caribbean and Northern.  Missouri Valley, Texas, New England, and Southwest are all in a group where they each play two of the other three, and Missouri Valley is also in a pod with NorCal and Hawaii where they each play each other.  PNW, Eastern, and SoCal also all play each other.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 40 & Over 3.5 men

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 40 & Over 3.5 men which will be played the second weekend of Nationals.

This schedule looks reasonably random but as with others, there are some mini-pods.

Southwest, Texas, and Intermountain all play each other, Middle States, NorCal, and Mid-Atlantic do as well, and Florida, Midwest, and Caribbean all do too.

Simulating 2022 USTA League Nationals - 18 & Over 3.5 Men

As I've done since 2018, I will be doing simulations of each Nationals to predict who the most likely four teams are to make the semi-finals, and also look at other interesting things that may occur.  In the years I've done this, the simulations have done a pretty good job predicting who would advance to the semis including having all four teams predicted correctly several times.

Why do these simulations you ask?  The primary reason is that the format for USTA League Nationals is now a flight-less random round-robin where each team plays four other random opponents.  This introduces significant variations in schedule strength, the possibility of an undefeated team not making the top-4, and teams vying for the top-4 perhaps not having played head-to-head and unfortunate tie-breakers being used.  The simulations aim to educate folks on how it all works and look at what may happen.  Also see this write-up for some things to know about Nationals.

Nationals is just getting going this weekend, the 18 & Over 3.5 event being held in Surprise, Arizona.  Here is what the simulation says is likely to happen for the Men's flight.

As a reminder, my simulations are done using my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings and looking at the average rating for the top group of players on each team, the actual schedule each team will play, and then doing a million simulations of the matches with some random variation in each team's expected result.

With 17 teams at the event the USTA never creates a schedule that can avoid more than four undefeated teams, and there is a chance of six undefeated (it happened in 7 of the million simulations) and a less than 1% chance of five undefeated.  There is a 3% chance of four undefeated, which is pretty high, which means it is very likely a 3-1 team and find their way in to the semis.

There is a 93% chance that there will be a tie for the last spot (4-0 or 3-1) and it come down to tie-breakers.  The most likely size of the tie is a 4 at 28%, five is 25%, and three is 19%.  The chances of larger ties diminish pretty quickly, but a 13-way tie is theoretically possible, but it appears a multi-way tie is a very high probability and it could be reasonably large.

Should there be a tie on team record, it comes down first to who has the best court record, then head-to-head (if applicable), then to who lost the fewest sets, then who lost the fewest games, and finally percent of games won.  There is a 29% chance it comes down to the sets lost tie-breaker, and there is a 66% chance that is between two teams and a pretty good 28% chance it is between three teams.  If the controversial tie-breakers are going to come into play, this is the likely spot.

The schedule strengths do vary a bit, the team with the easiest schedule having an opponent average of 3.48 while the team with the toughest schedule having an opponent average of 3.61.  This leads to an easier road for some teams than others, one of the predicted semi-finalists getting there due to an easier schedule.

So who is most likely to come out in the top-4?  Intermountain and Southern are solid choices, with Midwest, Southern Cal, and Eastern vying for the last two spots.  But there are a host of teams lurking with Florida, Texas, and PNW the most likely to be in the running.

For those interested, I offer a variety of reports to make Nationals more fun and help captains prepare.  I have a Simulation Report that has all of the details of the simulation including the average ratings for each team, each team's schedule strength, the most likely record for each team, and the chance of each possible record for each team.  I also offer reports to help teams scout opponents in more detail, both a Flight Report with full roster averages, top-8 averages and played by court averages for each team, as well as full Team Reports with detailed ratings for each rostered player and stats who who plays with who and on which court and how they do together.  Contact me if interested in any of these reports.

Simulating 2022 USTA League Nationals - 18 & Over 2.5 Women

As I've done since 2018, I will be doing simulations of each Nationals to predict who the most likely four teams are to make the semi-finals, and also look at other interesting things that may occur.  In the years I've done this, the simulations have done a pretty good job predicting who would advance to the semis including having all four teams predicted correctly several times.

Why do these simulations you ask?  The primary reason is that the format for USTA League Nationals is now a flight-less random round-robin where each team plays four other random opponents.  This introduces significant variations in schedule strength, the possibility of an undefeated team not making the top-4, and teams vying for the top-4 perhaps not having played head-to-head and unfortunate tie-breakers being used.  The simulations aim to educate folks on how it all works and look at what may happen.  Also see this write-up for some things to know about Nationals.

Nationals is just getting going this weekend, the 18 & Over 2.5 event being held in Oklahoma City and having just a women's flight.  Here is what the simulation says is likely to happen.

I will preface this saying that the 2.5 level is very hard to predict as it is often has many players brand new to USTA League that are improving at different rates, and without much of any play between sections, players are often significantly out of level come Nationals.  But it is still fun to look at so here goes.

As a reminder, my simulations are done using my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings and looking at the average rating for the top group of players on each team, the actual schedule each team will play, and then doing a million simulations of the matches with some random variation in each team's expected result.

With 17 teams at the event the USTA never creates a schedule that can avoid more than four undefeated teams, and there is an over 4% chance of five undefeated.  There is a 19% chance of four undefeated, which is pretty high, but still a very good chance a 3-1 team and find their way in to the semis.

There is a 76% chance that there will be a tie for the last spot (4-0 or 3-1) and it come down to tie-breakers.  The most likely size of the tie is a 4 at 28%, but three is also 28%, and five is 22%.  The chances of larger ties diminish pretty quickly, but a 13-way tie is theoretically possible, but it appears a multi-way tie is a very high probability and it could be reasonably large.

Should there be a tie on team record, it comes down first to who has the best court record, then head-to-head (if applicable), then to who lost the fewest sets, then who lost the fewest games, and finally percent of games won.  There is a 37% chance it comes down to the sets lost tie-breaker, and there is a 52% chance that is between two teams and a very good 34% chance it is between three teams.  If the controversial tie-breakers are going to come into play, this is the likely spot.

The schedule strengths do vary a bit, the team with the easiest schedule having an opponent average of 2.57 while the team with the toughest schedule having an opponent average of 2.82.  This leads to an easier road for some teams than others, one of the predicted semi-finalists getting there due to an easier schedule.

So who is most likely to come out in the top-4?  Southern, Missouri Valley, and Southwest are solid choices, with Intermountain and Middle States vying for the last spot.  But there are a host of teams lurking including NorCal, New England, Caribbean, and PNW.

For those interested, I offer a variety of reports to make Nationals more fun and help captains prepare.  I have a Simulation Report that has all of the details of the simulation including the average ratings for each team, each team's schedule strength, the most likely record for each team, and the chance of each possible record for each team.  I also offer reports to help teams scout opponents in more detail, both a Flight Report with full roster averages, top-8 averages and played by court averages for each team, as well as full Team Reports with detailed ratings for each rostered player and stats who who plays with who and on which court and how they do together.  Contact me if interested in any of these reports.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 18 & Over 4.5 women

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 18 & Over 4.5 women which will be played the second weekend of Nationals.

This schedule looks reasonably random but as with others, there are some mini-pods.

Florida, Texas, and Midwest all play each other, Northern, Southern, and Southwest all play each others, and New England, SoCal, and Intermountain all play each other.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 18 & Over 4.5 men

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 18 & Over 4.5 men which will be played the second weekend of Nationals.

This schedule looks reasonably random, but there are some mini-pods.  Southwest, Southern, and Texas all play each other, Caribbean, Missouri Valley, and PNW all play each other, and NorCal, New England, and Northern all play each other.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 18 & Over 3.5 women

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 18 & Over 3.5 women, also being played the first weekend of Nationals.

This set of matches looks reasonably random, but unlike the others so far the circle has two discontinuities around the edge indicating a bit of things being split into two large groups, but there are eight matches between the groups so they are not isolated from each other.

But even within the groups there are some mini-pods, with Eastern, Hawaii, and PNW all playing each other, and Northern playing two of those teams as well.  Then Mid-Atlantic, New England and Texas all play each other.  Then NorCal, Midwest, and Middle States all play each other.

We'll see how this all plays out in the simulation when I post it closer to the event.

What if Florida had used a random schedule for 9.0 Mixed Sectionals?

I wrote several posts about the Florida 9.0 Mixed Sectionals that were played this weekend where four teams finished 4-0, but only two could advance.

I've also started doing visualizations of unflighted round-robin schedules to get an idea of who is playing who at a glance, and to see if there are pockets or islands of match-ups or other oddities.

I was asked what a proper random schedule would have looked like for this event, so I created one!

For reference, here is the schedule that was used.

You can clearly see that they seemingly created two groups of five teams, and then had them play matches only against the other group.  This led to the possibility of five 4-0 teams, and it ended up being that there were four.

Here is a schedule generated from my random schedule generator.

This clearly looks different and there is a lot of cross play between different teams, and there are no clear groups or pods of teams.  And when run through my simulator, there is a zero percent change of five or four undefeated teams, and a less than 2% chance of three undefeated teams.  I'm guessing all involved would have been happier with this schedule.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 18 & Over 2.5 women

Next up in my series of posts visualizing the 2022 USTA League Nationals schedules is the 18 & Over 2.5 women, also being played the first weekend of Nationals.

This schedule looks reasonably random, but does have some mini-pods like the 18 & Over 3.5 men did.  Florida, Intermountain, and Midwest all play each other, and NorCal, Mid-Atlantic, and New England all play each other, and Northern plays both New England and Mid-Atlantic.

Visualizing USTA League Nationals Schedules - 18 & Over 3.5 men

USTA League Nationals will be underway in less than two weeks, and I'll begin posting my previews and summaries of my simulations soon.  But something I'm experimenting with is showing the unflighted round-robin random schedules in interesting ways and I wanted to start sharing that right away.

I started experimenting with this as a result of looking at how the unflighted round-robin format was used at Florida Sectionals this weekend, and it is basically graphically showing the schedule in the form of a directed graph with the teams as nodes and the matches shown as edges.

To start, here is the graph for one of the first weekend events, the 18 & Over 3.5 men.

I've used abbreviations for the sections that are hopefully self explanatory.

This shows what appears to be a reasonably random schedule where all teams are somewhat connected and no obvious islands or isolated groups of teams.

There are a few "mini-pods" though.  These are:

• Caribbean plays Southern Cal who plays Northern Cal who plays Caribbean
• Midwest plays New England who plays Middle States who plays Midwest

Then there is also a larger pod with Missouri Valley playing Eastern, Florida, and Pacific Northwest, Florida also playing Eastern and Pacific Northwest.

Then there is one more larger pod with Hawaii playing Intermountain and Northern, Texas also playing Northern and Intermountain.

When I do the simulation we'll see what the risk of 5 or more undefeated teams are.

What do you think of seeing schedules this way?

Well, it happened, TWO undefeated teams are left out at Florida Mixed Sectionals

I wrote two days ago that there was a chance an undefeated team in the Florida Mixed Sectionals 9.0 flight would be left out and not have a chance to advance.  I wrote an update yesterday saying things were on track for it to happen.  Well, unfortunately it ended up happening.

With four teams all 2-0 after yesterday's matches and none of them playing each other today, it was primed to happen.  After one match today, the four teams were all 3-0 with court records ranging from 8-1 to 6-3.

Two teams won quickly and they were 4-0 with one 11-1 on courts and the other 10-2, but I think there was a rain delay and matches moved indoor to complete so we had to wait to see if we had more undefeated teams.  The team that was 3-0/6-3 was already eliminated, even winning their last match 3-0 would only get them to 4-0/9-3 (which they did) and there were already two teams ahead of them.  The other one ended up winning and ending up 4-0/10-2.

The final standings were:

Miami-Dade - 4-0 / 11-1 / 22-5
Sarasota - 4-0 / 10-2 / 21-6
Hills - 4-0 / 10-2 / 22-7
Broward - 4-0 / 9-3 / 18-8

Miami-Dade was in as the first place team, but it took the sets lost tie-breaker to select Sarasota as the second place team, leaving Hills and Broward out.

While the flawed tie-breakers didn't come into play here, the sets lost tie-breaker was still used to break a tie between two teams that didn't play each other or the exact same schedule which feels a little unfair.  But that is the way it is and everyone knew the situation up front.

That is brutal for both Hills and Broward, but especially Hills as they only lost two courts across four matches and that wasn't enough to advance to the final.  I can't imagine what it would be like to have that performance and not have a chance to continue playing.

I was half wondering if they would ad lib and take all four teams and play two semi-finals instead of just taking the top-2 to the final, but TennisLink shows Miami-Dade and Sarasota in the final, so it appears that won't happen.

As much as I like writing about these topics and this was clearly fodder to do so, I really hoped this wouldn't happen and and would never wish this on any team.  And it was avoidable.  With 10 teams, they could have had two flights of five and have everyone play the same four matches and have two flight winners advance.  Or they could have used unflighted round-robin but with an actual random assignment of matches and a verification it was sound beforehand.

If nothing else, perhaps this is educational for Florida and other sections and even National to avoid scenarios like this in the future.

Day one update on Florida Mixed Sectionals - Still a great chance of an undefeated team being sent home

I wrote yesterday about the potential for an unflighted round-robin fiasco at Florida Mixed Sectionals, and then added a diagram showing the issue this morning.  After day one, the worst case scenario has already been averted, but we aren't out of the woods yet.

In today's matches in the 9.0 flight, each of Miami, Hills, Sarasota, and Broward all won, but Alachua lost 2-1 to Orange when there was an upset on one court.  So there are four 2-0 teams, and none of them play each other tomorrow.  But we won't have five 4-0 teams.

Here again is the visual description of the schedule.

So you can see the four 2-0 teams are all in the bottom row (the row I said was the "good" pod) and none of them play each other.

My simulation now says there is a 16% chance all four teams go 2-0 tomorrow and finish 4-0, and there is a 39% chance three teams do so, together that means there is a 55% chance three or more teams finish 4-0 and one of them doesn't advance and is sent home.

Now, there is a 45% chance it doesn't happen as well, but that is lower than it was at the start of the event.

In a way, I hope it doesn't happen as it really wouldn't be fair to the teams that are sent home.  But then I'm hoping teams lose which seems wrong.

On the other hand, if it does happen it will help highlight the issues with the format and hopefully educate folks on when not to use it, or how to use it correctly.

A diagram illustrating the unflighted round-robin problem at Florida 18 & Over Mixed Sectionals

I wrote yesterday about the possibility of there being five undefeated teams for two advancing spots at this weekend's Florida 18 & Over Mixed Sectionals in the 9.0 flight.

I think it was pretty clear the issue, that having two pods play matches against other pods but not within the pod is a recipe for disaster.  But I've created a diagram to explicitly show it.

You can see there are clearly two groups of five teams that play against the other five, but not each other.

While this is a simple format to create, it clearly won't select the top two teams very well.  Since none of the top group or bottom group play each other, it is possible for all the teams in one group or the other to end up 4-0, and thus my simulation saying that is possible.

Now, if there are strong teams in both pods, the chances of it occurring may not be that large, but if you have the strong teams all in one pod, it can be very likely to happen.

In this case, the top row has, by my ratings, four of the bottom five rated teams while the bottom row has four of the top five rated teams.  Thus the fairly high likelihood that three or more teams finish 4-0 and one or more of them get left out.

I don't know if someone at Florida came up with this way of doing "random" opponents, or if this was what National advised, but it clearly isn't the best way to do things.

Another unflighted round-robin disaster in the making at Florida Mixed Sectionals

A reader gave me a heads up (thanks!) about the Florida 18 & Over Mixed Sectionals this weekend, specifically that one of the flights has the "random" round-robin format perhaps not so random.

In the 9.0 flight there are 10 teams and the teams are playing four matches each.  There should be no problem with this.  USTA League Nationals have 17 teams and the play four matches, and while there is a chance that five (or more) teams could finish undefeated, the chance is usually small, so having just 10 teams there should be no issue right?

Well, Florida is as I understand it taking just the top-2 teams while Nationals takes the top-4 teams.  But worse, if you botch the random opponent assignments, things can go really bad.  And it appears that may be the case for the 9.0 flight this weekend.

I've run the event through my simulation there astoundingly there is a chance that five teams could finish undefeated.  At Nationals with 17 teams the chances of five undefeated teams are always non-zero, but usually less than 1%.  For this Florida Sectionals with just 10 teams, the chance of five undefeated is over 1%.  Since they are taking the top-2 to the final, this means it is possible that three undefeated teams could be sent home!

Ok, but it is just over 1%, that is unlikely, what is the big deal?

Well, the chances of four undefeated teams is 9% and three is 25%!  That means there is a 35% chance that at least one undefeated team is sent home without a chance to advance to Nationals.

How can this happen?  While it is possible a truly random schedule would result in this, it would seem that somehow the stronger teams don't play each other, but each one plays all of the weaker teams.  For example, if you had the five strongest teams in one "pod" and the five weaker teams in another, you could create a schedule where each of the teams from the strong pod play four teams in the weak pod but never play each other.  I have no idea if this is what was done or not, but if so, someone seriously dropped the ball as that is a worst case scenario for this to happen.  If there is any kind of disparity between the stronger/weaker teams, there is a real chance the strong pod all goes undefeated.

This sort of thing has happened before.  Southern Cal Sectionals earlier this year had a 10 team flight playing just three matches and three teams finished undefeated and only the top-2 advanced.  And a few years ago Northern Cal Sectionals had 22 teams only playing three matches and while they took the top-4 to semis, there were five undefeated teams.  I'm pretty sure it has happened elsewhere too.

This is a call out to National to educate the sections on how to properly do unflighted round-robin.  And this is also a call out to the sections to think about what you are doing the vet the schedule that is spit out of whatever random selection it is doing.  If it doesn't make sense, do it over.

2022 USTA League Nationals schedules have been posted - Simulation reports can now be ordered

The first USTA League Nationals for 2022 is just over two weeks away, and the USTA has finally published schedules so teams can see who they will be playing.  The schedules can be seen on the main Nationals page by clicking the schedule link for the respective events.

This means teams can begin scouting who they will play, and I can do my simulation reports and tailored flight reports.  Several folks have ordered them already, so I'll be getting those to you soon, but if you haven't planned to use my reports to scout and plan, read my summary of what I offer and consider doing so.

I did an early preview of the 18 & Over Nationals a few weeks ago, and with the schedules out I'll be able to do my detailed previews.  These include a few items that go into my reports, but not nearly everything, and I generally post these right before the events so I'm on the record with what I predict.  But if you want all the details and to have it sooner, do consider inquiring about what I can offer.

Good luck everyone!

An early preview of the 2022 USTA League 18 & Over Nationals

It appears all of the 18 & Over Sectionals are complete, and the teams going to Nationals have been decided.  That means I can begin previewing the different events.

As a reminder, the first event at Nationals is now less than four week away with the 18 & Over 2.5 women in Oklahoma City, and the 18 & over 3.5 men and women in Surprise, AZ.

I do offer very detailed previews for teams going to Nationals that want to scout opponents and plan line-ups, what follows is just a quick summary.

Going through each event in the order they will be played, here are the ranges of each team's top player averages using my Estimated Dynamic NTRP Ratings.

September 30 - October 2

The 2.5 women have 17 teams with top-5 averages ranging from 2.52 all the way up to 3.00.  Yep, there is a 2.5 team with some players into the range for a 3.5.

The 3.5 men also have 17 teams with top-8 averages from 3.45 to 3.79.  This is not as severe as the 2.5 women, but there is a 3.5 team with a top-8 average closer to being 4.0 than 3.5.

The 3.5 women have 17 teams with top-8 averages from 3.44 to 3.64.

October 7 - October 9

The 4.5 men have 16 teams, Southwest seems to be missing at this point, with top-8 averages from 4.37 to 4.59.

The 4.5 women have 15 teams, Hawaii and Caribbean don't have teams at this point, with top-8 averages from 4.26 to 4.53.

October 14 - October 16

The 3.0 men have 16 teams, Southwest doesn't have a team listed yet, with top-8 averages from 3.04 to 3.25.

The 3.0 women have 17 teams with top-8 averages from 2.93 to 3.23.

The 4.0 men have 17 teams with top-8 averages from 3.86 to 4.16.

The 4.0 women have 17 teams with top-8 averages from 3.87 to 4.11.

October 21 - October 23

The 5.0 men have 15 teams, Hawaii and Northern are missing, with top-5 averages from 4.68 to 4.98.

The 5.0 women have just 12 teams, Hawaii, Southwest, Northern, New England, and Eastern are missing, with top-5 averages from 4.59 to 4.94.

There you have it, your first preview of 2022 USTA League Nationals.

If you are interested in more detailed reports to help scout and plan, contact me!