How did 2023 Florida 18 & Over Sectionals play out?

I wrote Friday about a potential issue with the use of the unflighted round-robin format at 18 & Over Florida Sectionals, but then heard they would be adding a final after all, but they didn't add the final to TennisLink until late Sunday so to outside observers there was some drama.

It turns out the drama was not because round-robin play finished with two undefeated teams (which was possible and the brewing issue), but because three teams finished 3-1.  Had they not introduced a final between the top two teams, they would have been picking a winner to go to Nationals where three teams were tied and two of them hadn't even played each other.

Here are the standings at the end of round-robin play:

• Miami - 3-1 / 14-6
• Hills - 3-1 / 12-8
• Broward - 3-1 / 11-9

Broward had beaten Miami 3-2, but then Hills beat Broward 3-2, but Hills lost to Orange 3-2 (who finished 5th of 7 teams at 2-2 / 9-11).  Miami and Hills did not play.

Had they just taken the top team in the standings, Miami would have advanced never having to play Hills.  But even with the final, you have to pick two of these teams and Broward got left out despite beating the top team in the standings.  But taking the top two teams to a final still solves the major problem.

In the final, Hills came out on top winning 3-2, so a very close competition, Hill ultimately beating both of the other two top teams to punch their ticket to Nationals.

I'm glad it all worked out in the end, congratulations to Hills!

Update: Unflighted Round-Robin may work out ok at Florida Sectionals

I just wrote about what appeared to be a potential unflighted round-robin issue at Florida Sectionals, but a reader on Facebook said a team dropped out late causing the change from two flights to unflighted seven teams and there is a final planned.  I guess it just doesn't show up on TennisLink yet so the fears may be unfounded.

I did think it would be interesting to visually see the schedule, so here it is.

If indeed there is a final, it could be the nice resolution to two undefeated teams, but it is perhaps more likely that it will be a rematch of a round-robin match.  That is the possibility with this format and one can argue it is good or bad.

On the good side, it means a team with a tough schedule that loses early can still have a chance to advance.  This keeps some drama and excitement, and perhaps keeps the teams more engaged through the end of the event.

On the bad side, it means a team could have to beat the same opponent twice to win the event.  If there are two top teams and they play in round-robin, pulling out the stops to win that match may just mean you get to play them again in the semis or final.  That can lead to the round-robin match perhaps being meaningless, especially if it is the last one and the teams know already they will both advance.

In general, I think unflighted round-robin is better than the most alternatives, as long as it is implemented correctly.  Hopefully there is a final for the 4.5 men this weekend.

USTA Florida may be botching the unflighted round-robin format once again! (false alarm, phew)

The unflighted round-robin format was introduced by USTA National a number of years ago for use at Nationals so that all teams could play four matches and the format would be consistent regardless of the number of sections that sent teams.  Some sections have adopted the format for section or even district championships, some smartly, and some not so smartly.

A few of the gaffes include NorCal having too many teams (22) and too few matches (3) leading to undefeated teams not advancing, SoCal doing something similar, and Florida using a mindless implementation of it (missing the "random" part) also leading to two undefeated teams being sent home.

It appears Florida may be at it again, this time having the 18 & Over Sectionals with what appears to be some flawed unflighted round-robin set ups.

Specifically, the 4.5 men this weekend appears to have seven teams all playing four matches, so every team doesn't play every other team, and they are only taking the top team as the Sectionals winner!  If every team doesn't play all the others, obviously two teams could go undefeated, and if you only take one team as the winner ... duh?

Hopefully what I'm seeing on TennisLink is wrong, but for every other flight going on this weekend, it shows flights/round-robins and then a finals to be played, but for the 4.5 men there is just the round-robin with no final.

If they do indeed take just the top team in the standings as the winner, they may luck out as the top teams do play each other.  Still, it is possible, and using such a format is just plain dumb.

I also see the 2.5 women with 10 teams and no final, but I don't think that event is this weekend so perhaps TennisLink just isn't fully populated.  Similarly the 4.0 men and women don't show finals, hopefully those get fixed.

Updated: I've been told there is indeed a final between the top-2 teams that just hasn't been added to TennisLink yet.  Apparently there was a late withdrawal and change to seven teams and unflighted.  Phew!  See this update.

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.

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.

USTA League Nationals in Florida - Rain? Who knew!

For 2017 the USTA elected to hold a bunch of USTA League Nationals in Florida.  Last weekend the 18 & over 5.0+ level was played at the National Campus in Orlando and to my knowledge went off without incident, but this weekend Fort Lauderdale is hosting the 40 & over 3.0 level and it appears they've started out with a 2-hour delay due to rain and the forecast doesn't look promising.

That is not the most reassuring weather report when you have over 300 individual courts to get played over three days.

This was a concern I wrote and even polled about when all this was announced, the about a quarter of those polled agreed with me that due to weather, Nationals should have stayed in Arizona and California.  While you can have weather or fires or other events that may affect the ability to get the matches in regardless of location, picking a location where it frequently rains and it is a pretty sure thing that there will be some sort of weather delay over a location where it is highly unlikely to have one does not seem like the best decision, especially given the time and expense players and teams are asked to incur to make the trip.

Hopefully the weather holds and all the matches can be played as planned, but as someone spending thousands of dollars to make a trip to Nationals, I know I'd be pretty unhappy if I end up making the trip to only get to play a few pro-sets instead of complete matches.

p.s. if they had stuck with playing in the California desert, here is the forecast there.

Is Florida boycotting 2017 USTA League 18 & over 3.5 Men's Nationals being in Arizona?

I just wrote that the flights for 18 & over Nationals are on TennisLink, and in something of a surprise, Florida appears to not be sending a team for the 3.5 men!  And the last two years Florida won their flight and played in the semis, so that is typically a pretty good team that won't be there.

I wrote yesterday that Hawaii was seemingly not going to several Nationals, and for them the move of most Nationals to Florida/Alabama makes for a really long trip, so it is understandable.  But now Florida is not going to 3.5 Men's Nationals which is the level most commonly played so most surprising to see a missing team.

Looking at the team that won Florida Sectionals, they had a roster of 14, although one was DQ'd at Sectionals, and 13 should be more than enough to go to Nationals.  But, quite a few didn't play at Sectionals even though they were eligible.  But, perhaps they didn't have enough to go.

Or more likely, since the team that won is from an area hit pretty hard by Irma (Tampa / St. Pete), their situation could have changed and going to Nationals just isn't a priority which is fully understandable.

If that is the case though, what is surprising is that the runner up from Sectionals isn't there in their place.  I don't know if that wasn't considered or they declined too.  The runner up plays out of the eastern side of the state which was not hit nearly as hard by Irma.

But given that I believe the section could have elected to send another team, are they boycotting that the 18 & over 3.5 level is still being played in Arizona rather than Florida?  A trip to Arizona would be no different than prior years, and in fact is a bit shorter for Floridians than a trip to Palm Springs, so that doesn't seem like a good reason, but you never know.

Regardless, the section that had a team in the semis the last two years is not going to be represented apparently.