Tuesday, July 23, 2019

2020 USTA NTRP Nationals Schedule Published

If you are a USTA NTRP tournament player and interested in testing your skills against the best from other sections, NTRP Nationals may be for you.

NTRP Nationals is an event that players qualify for within their section, and then all the qualifiers come together for a weekend tournament to determine the champion at each NTRP level for each gender.

If you are interested, the schedule for 2020 has been published.
  • 18 & Over Singles - April 3-5 in Surprise, AZ
  • 18 & Over Doubles - April 17-19 in Surprise, AZ
  • 50 & Over Singles - April 3-5 in Orlando, FL
  • 50 & Over Doubles - April 17-19 in Naples, FL
There is a theme here, a player can't play both 18 & Over and 50 & Over in the same discipline, and 50 & Over is in Florida, likely on clay, while 18 & Over is in Arizona on hard courts.  This basically swapped from last year's schedule where 50 & Over was in Arizona and 18 & Over in Florida.  Makes sense to alternate so it is geographically closer to West/East coast in alternating years.

Monday, July 22, 2019

2019 Southern 18 & Over USTA League Sectionals Recap

The Southern section held their 18 & Over Sectionals this weekend, actually the last finals finishing up today, and here is a recap.

First, the weather.  The event was again in Mobile, and again there was rain.  So much that by the end they were playing no-ad and short sets to 4 rather than 6.  Note that 40 & Over is back at Mobile against this weekend and the forecast is for a 50% chance of scattered thunderstorms Saturday thru Monday, so there could be format changes again.  Let's hope the rain isn't too bad and a Sectionals Champ isn't decided with a short format.

Second, this Sectionals used the flightless random round-robin format for some events, it appears where there were fewer than 10 teams and so they couldn't have two five team flights.  Thankfully, unlike NorCal's use of the format where they had as many as 21 teams in the round-robin and each team play only 3 matches, Southern had each team play 4 round-robin matches and with only 7-9 teams in the round-robin, there were no undefeated teams left out from advancing to the semis.

That isn't to say things were always clear-cut.  There were some ties for the advancing spots:
  • The 2.5 women had seven teams in the round-robin and three teams tied at 2-2 for 3rd-5th, but the 3rd and 4th teams had better court records.
  • The 4.0 women had nine teams in the round-robin and a 4-way tie for 4th at 2-2, but one team had a better court record and advance, but still very close.  One super tie-break goes the other way in a number of matches and the result is a lot different.
  • The 4.5 women had eight teams but no tie for the last advancing spot.
  • The 3.0 men had eight teams and a 3-way tie for 4th, the advancing team having the better court record.
  • The 5.0+ men had seven teams and a 2-way tie for 4th, the advancing team having the better court record.
So the format seemed to work well, and thankfully things were decided on court records and didn't get to the bad tie-breakers.

Third, we need to check if any Sectional Champs were early start league teams with bumped up players that won't be eligible at Nationals.
  • The 3.0 men had a Georgia and Alabama team in the final, both from ESLs with players that are now 3.5s, and Georgia won.  They have just one 3.5 though so the team will largely be the same at Nationals.
  • The 4.5 women had an ESL Georgia team in the final, but they did not have any year-end 5.0s and lost to Kentucky in the final anyway.
  • The 4.0 women had an ESL Tennessee team in the final with one year-end 4.5, but Louisiana won the final.
  • The 3.0 women had an ESL Georgia team with 7(!) now 3.5s playing a Tennessee ESL team with 3 now 3.5s.  Georgia predictably won and now goes to Nationals with a radically different roster than they won Sectionals with.  The seven ineligible players played in 66% of the player slots in round-robin.
  • The 2.5 women had an ESL Tennessee team with 6 of 10 eligible players now 3.0s win and advance to Nationals.  Note that these 3.0s may be eligible for Nationals as the 2.5 level is granted an exception and players must be "clearly above level" to not be eligible for Nationals.
So one team will definitely be affected, and two others may have minor impacts to their Nationals eligible rosters.

Were you at the event?  How did it go or what are your thoughts?

Friday, July 19, 2019

ITF announces new World Tennis Number to compete with UTR

Regular readers of my blog may remember me writing about the International Tennis Federation's (ITF) International Tennis Number (ITN) in the past.  Well, it appears the ITN will be no more and be replaced by a new World Tennis Number (WTN).

The announcement, made jointly with several national tennis federations including the USTA, FFT (France), and LTA (Britain), doesn't offer many specifics but states that the WTN will
aim to break down one of sport’s key barriers to participation - uneven match-ups - allowing players of all abilities to determine their individual level. This will help players identify opponents and competitions of an appropriate standard and access to more competitive and enjoyable playing opportunities.
It goes on to mention that the WTN (emphasis mine)
will be a powerful enabler in fulfilling the fundamental objectives of increasing participation, and recruiting and retaining players of any age, gender and ability.
I don't believe the prior ITN specifically said whether it was or wasn't gender neutral, but clearly the WTN is intended to be gender neutral, unlike the USTA's NTRP but like UTR.

Some other items of note that I gleaned from reading the site and FAQ:
  • Targets players of all levels, but a focus on recreational players.
  • Reaffirms being gender and age neutral.
  • Separate WTN for singles and doubles.
  • No mention of calculation details other than it being "based on the player’s performance in matches relative to the strength of their opponent".  It does say the principals of the calculation will be published for all to see, but it is unclear to what level of detail that will be.
  • Late 2019 to early 2020 launch.
  • Mentions an on-line community to connect players worldwide.
  • Other countries participating in the development include Canada, China, Ireland, Netherlands and Switzerland.

It also discusses adoption of WTN and says national association's existing rating systems are unaffected by introducing the WTN, and the roll out of WTN within a nation is up to the association and it may or may not be adopted along side or as a replacement for the existing system.

To me, while there is no mention of UTR in the press release or site to my knowledge, this is a shot across the bow of UTR.  The ITF is the international governing body for tennis and sees providing a way for players from or within any country to find and play competitive matches to be within their domain.  And to be fair, they created the ITN years ago pre-dating UTR.  Whether it is "international" or "universal" or "world" or "galactic" doesn't really matter, the aim is the same.

But ITN was not widely used (at least from my perspective in the U.S.) and frankly was dated in its algorithm and methodology as they were aiming to make it easy to implement by national associations or organizations 10-15 years ago or more.  In many ways, this sounds like an update to ITN to get it current, and they decided to rebrand it at the same time to make a splash.

What does this mean to USTA League and Tournament players?  My guess is nothing in the short term, I can't imagine there would be a change to use WTN in any way in the next few years.  But the USTA is supporting the WTN so I imagine there will be some collaboration to either support the calculation of the WTN by the ITF, or perhaps even calculate a WTN for players from their USTA play.  Regardless of how the USTA runs leagues and tournaments going forward, it appears players will have a WTN to use and gauge their play by.

What do you think?  Is WTN late to the game?  Or will a rating supported by the ITF and major national governing bodies carry more weight in the end?

Monday, July 1, 2019

PNW USTA League Regulations Changes for 2019/2020 - Thanks Adam!

I just received a PNW USTA newsletter highlighting a few USTA League regulations changes for 2020, and one for 2019.  These can be found here.

Most of them are minor clarifications where something wasn't clearly stated or staff had received a lot of questions, and go into effect for the 2020 USTA League season.

But one goes into effect for 2019 and is near and dear to my heart.  That is the tie-breakers used for breaking standings ties.

I've written much about it so won't go into detail again, but how standings ties are broken according to the National regulations is frankly flawed in my opinion, and I went so far as to make a regulations change proposal to National to get it fixed.  Alas, it wasn't adopted for the 2020 regulations, but I'm pleased to see that Adam Hutchinson, PNW Director of Competition that I worked with to sponsor my proposal, recognized the issue and has made a change for 2019 to fix it for the One Doubles league run in the PNW section.

Specifically, One Doubles is a league where each "team" match is a single doubles match, which means the team record is the same as the individual wins/losses record making that component of the standings tie-breaker meaningless.  In situations like this, the flawed components of the National tie-breaker come into play a lot more often and there had been numerous situations where the less deserving team had advanced.

Adam had observed this, it is part of why he supported my proposal, and decided he could do something about it in PNW and did.  Here is the write-up of the change, but the summary is that instead of using the inequitable sets and games lost components in the absence of looking at sets and games won, sets won and games won will be used.

For example, consider two teams exactly equal on all counts except for one match against a common opponent.  Who should get 2nd place?   Team A lost their match 6-0,6-0, while team B lost their match 6-7,7-6,1-0.  You would think that the team that got blown out is less deserving, but under the National regulation, team A, the one not winning a game, would advance having lost the same number of sets (2) and having lost fewer games (12 vs 14)!  With Adam's change, team B would advance first as they won a set in their loss (1 vs 0), but also clearly won more games (13 vs 0) if it came to that.

This, IMHO, is clearly fairer and will avoid the occasional situation where the "wrong" team advances.

Thanks Adam!