A 2025 regulations link has shown up on the USTA League Resources page, and here are my observations from a quick read through the document.
The document does not say "Draft" like some others in the past have at this time of year, so I assume it is official, but you never know if they'll decide to change something.
The only "Major Regulation Change" listed at the beginning of the document has to do with a section filing a grievance against a team for full team defaults, so at a high level there are no big changes coming. This is a bit odd, I think most every year I've been reviewing this has had a handful of changes so I guess the USTA thought the regulations were in a good spot already.
The 2024 regulations allowed for Sections to run Mixed leagues as straight-level leagues (3.0, 3.5, 4.0, etc.) instead of combined levels (6.0, 7.0, 8.0, etc.) through Sectionals and there had been speculation that was a precursor to Nationals changing to straight-levels in 2025, but that does not seem to be the case. I'm only aware of Southern choosing to implement this so far.
In fact, the only other highlighted changes in the document are related to full team defaults or matches where the majority of matches are not played. So for all intents and purposes, 2025 has the same regulations as 2024.
At Nationals last year there was some pretty severe ratings manipulation that led to a double National champ, and there was a thought that perhaps the USTA would do something to crack down on it, but nothing in the regulations despite my offering a host of options.
Last, we had an undefeated team at Nationals not make the semis last year, and there was again speculation that might lead to some sort of change to address the scenario, but as it relates to the regulations, no change there. That isn't to say documents about the event itself couldn't address changes to the format, but so far all FAQs I've seen don't indicate any change.
What do you think? What regulation change were you hoping for?
No comments:
Post a Comment