What this leads to though is some captains to stack their line-ups to try and get the 3 court wins necessary for a team win even if it is at the expense of a near guaranteed loss of the other 2 courts. They reason it is better to get their best players on say singles 2, and doubles 2 and 3 where they can win, than play straight-up and risk any of those players losing a court resulting in a 3-2 loss.
Some find stacking distasteful, others see it just as part of the strategy of team sports. After all, in football don't you try to identify your strengths and opponent's weaknesses and maximize the situations were you have an advantage?
Despite some not liking stacking, it is accepted that it is allowed and part of the game. But when the plus leagues were introduced several years ago, the problem got worse.
Plus leagues, or more correctly plus flights/levels, are where a team is allowed to have a few next level players on their roster. This generally happens in 40 & Over at the 4.5 level and 18 & Over at the 5.0 level.
For example, a 40 & Over 4.5+ team can have three 5.0's on the roster, and two can play in a given match. There is a further restriction though, the 5.0's must play on court 1, either both in doubles or one in doubles and the other in singles. The idea being that you want to try to have competitive matches for all players so requiring the 5.0's to be on court 1 helps ensure they play each other.
The problem is, if team A plays their 5.0's together in doubles and team B has one in singles and one in doubles, what is the incentive for team A to play their best available singles player on court 1 if they think or know they'll face a 5.0 there? From a strategy standpoint, if they play that strong singles player on court 2 they can't face a 5.0 there and have a better chance of winning a court.
The problem gets worse if a team doesn't have 5.0's on the roster or available for a match. Again team A has no reason to put their best 4.5's on court 1 to potentially face 5.0's, they'd be better off playing them on court 2 so they don't "waste" their best players in a likely to lose scenario. Some captains have gone so far as to play 4.0's playing up on court 1 to sacrifice those courts. This is generally not done out of spite or anything, it may just be that due to availability a 4.0 has to be in the line-up, and if they are likely to lose anyway, it might as well be against the opponent's best giving the other courts a better chance to win.
While stacking can make sense from a team strategy standpoint, it also means that a court or two is likely not going to have a competitive match. Since a key reason for level based play is to try to have competitive matches, this can leave a bad taste in one's mouth, especially if someone had to drive an hour each way for a match and is paying a guest/away team fee to play what may be a 30 minute 6-0,6-0 win.
Apparently, in at least one area of the country, there have been enough complaints about these uncompetitive matches that a notice was sent out to captains saying that the intent of the plus leagues is for the plus players to play each other, and stacking with players playing up on court 1 goes against the spirit of the league. It ended asking that captains stop the practice of putting 4.0 players on court 1 in a 4.5+ flight.
The notice even hinted that this was something being looked at by USTA National and that changes to the regulations may be forthcoming if the issue continued or got worse.
I can see both sides of the argument. A team without 5.0's is already at a disadvantage, so any rule that forces them to not sacrifice on court 1 just increases that disadvantage. But this is "just" recreational tennis and the goal is competitive matches so it isn't fair to someone to make the trip for an away match that isn't competitive.
I think there are probably a couple options to fix it.
One is to acknowledge that plus leagues do bring meaning to the court number, and make a simple change that not only must plus players play on court 1, but players playing up cannot play on court 1. This doesn't completely remove the stacking arrow from a captain's quiver, but would help avoid the gross mismatches that can occur. And certainly a team isn't going to have more than five players playing up.
A second solution is to remove court 1 rule entirely, and let a captain play their 5.0's on whatever court they want. This would introduce more strategy to line-ups, but would likely result in 5.0's playing each other less of the time. But a team that is stacking would have a harder time matching up their 4.0 against the opponent's 5.0 so it would be an improvement.
A third option is a hybrid of the two, and more complicated so I'm sure the USTA would never do it, but bear with me a minute. Keep the rule that requires 5.0's to play on court 1, but also require that both captains declare before exchanging line-ups if they are playing two, one, or zero 5.0's that day. If the teams are not playing the same number of 5.0's, the team playing more of them is allowed to play the difference on a court other than 1.
For example, team A has two 5.0's but team B has one. Team B must play their 5.0 on a court 1, but team A only has to play one of their 5.0's on a court 1, the other may play on any court. If team B had no 5.0's, then team A could play both their 5.0's on any court.
This third option still gives captains the ability to strategically stack, but give the other captain the ability to adapt with their plus players to try to avoid uncompetitive matches.
What do you think? Is this a problem? If so, what is the best solution? Vote in the poll below. Or leave a comment here or on Facebook.
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