These surveys can be an indicator of changes to come, and in the case of plus flights we saw a rule change for 2020 forbidding players playing up from playing on court 1 in plus flights, e.g. a 4.0 cannot play court one in a 4.5+ flight.
What about the format for 40 & Over? The 2020 regulations document I've seen still lists 2 singles and 3 doubles as the National format, but I am hearing that National has announced a change to 1 singles and 3 doubles for 2020.
Note: I believe this has just been announced by National and as such sections/districts/areas may not have fully digested it and come up with a plan yet. I understand local leagues may have the option to adopt this format or stay with 2 singles and 3 doubles but am unaware of any decisions districts/areas have made one way or the other but expect each will be notifying players and captains of the decision for their local leagues soon. I'd ask you be patient while they do so as asking your LC about it probably won't speed things up. As I hear any announcements, I will write about them so stay tuned.
Now, on to my thoughts and analysis of the change.
I personally am not a fan of this change, I think there are a number of issues with it including fewer playing opportunities in general (just 7 players per team match rather than 8) and cutting in half the opportunities for singles players wanting to play 40 & Over. And what about team scoring and standings now that you have just four courts and matches will end in 2-2 ties (see below)?
But why might this change have been made? Certainly, the survey results may have shown support for it (but see below where I debunk survey results on this subject as potentially misleading), but I can also see some areas with limited court availability being in favor of it as it allows a team match to be played on four courts rather than requiring five.
In my area, there are some facilities with only four courts and today, this forces a split start time for matches where two (or three) matches go on at the start of the match, and the other three (or two) go on after they complete. This makes for a long team match if one stays for the whole thing. And it reduces the number of league matches and thus teams a facility can host when a team match takes up all the courts for 3+ hours.
With the new format, a four court facility can now host a team match all at the same time, and with one fewer court used, facilities can make it available to other members/players so a team match isn't taking up as many courts. But I wonder how big of an issue this really is/was?
On the survey, I would not be surprised if there were a fair number of responses in favor of 1/3. But let's think about it a minute. In the 2/3 format, just two of the eight players play singles, 25%, and it is probably fair to say the makeup of a team is similarly 25% singles players and 75% doubles players. Sure, some may play both but the player population at 40+ is certainly biased towards doubles players.
So, if you then do a survey of these players, and 70+% of them are doubles players that prefer doubles, what format do you think they'd vote for? If the majority of players don't want to play singles, they will probably vote for fewer singles courts, with the 30-% of singles players that want two singles courts simply out voted. I don't know what the survey results were, but this is a situation where I think the survey results needed to be not taken at face value but looked at in the context of the playing population.
And given that the 2/3 format already is biased towards doubles with 75% of the players playing doubles, why would you take away 50% of the few opportunities for singles players? Only 14% of the players in a 1/3 format team match are now singles players, and that hardly seems representative. You can't really trot out stats saying the majority of players over 40 play doubles and claim that is representative of interests, if the format you provide is biased towards forcing those players to play doubles ...
Now I am somewhat surprised the change was to 1/3 rather than 1/4. A 1/4 format would have avoided the 2-2 team match tie issue, and it would have actually increased playing opportunity as there would be 9 instead of 8 spots in each team match. I hope this is not the case, but someone suggested to me there were a lot of survey results asking for 2/3 or 1/4, and someone at the USTA decided to split the difference and do 1/3 was a happy medium 😏 But I'm guessing the fewer courts was attractive to facilities, or in smaller areas it was thought requiring 9 players for a team match would result in more defaults or would require larger rosters and thus fewer teams could be formed.
The other potential reason for this is that it was perceived that some teams were not competitive in 40 & Over because they didn't have two strong singles players. I'm sure it is true that not every team has strong singles players, but in 18 & Over not every team has two strong singles players either so I don't really see the difference. In either case, I don't see how dumbing down the competition at the expense of promoting singles play is a good thing.
What about defaults? Is it possible 40 & Over had a lot of defaults at 2 singles and so it was perceived 2 singles was not needed as a court? I don't think the data supports that at all. I took a look at the matches in 18 & Over and 40 & Over for 2018 and here is how things compare as it relates to defaults.
In 18 & Over, 6.4% of all courts were defaulted by one team while in 40 & Over it was 6.6%. While 40 & Over is a bit higher, that is hardly significant and not an indicator that 40 & Over is defaulting courts at an abnormally high rate because all 5 courts can't be filled.
But what about where the defaults occurred? In looking at this stat, keep in mind that USTA rules dictate that if a team is missing one person and the others all want to play, they must default 2 singles first so it is going to be the court most often defaulted. Court 3 doubles of course could be defaulted instead, but then another player is missing out on playing.
In 18 & Over, 38% of the defaults occurred on 1 singles while in 40 & Over 36% occurred there. So this certainly does not support the notion that court 2 singles was being defaulted at an alarming high rate as it is lower than the rate for 18 & Over. Based on this stat, if anything, 18 & Over should have had its format changed to just 1 singles court!
I've mentioned the scoring several times, so what about it? Having four courts does present a problem where team wins are decided by who won the most courts. Yes, you will still have some 4-0 and 3-1 wins, but a lot of those 3-2 wins or 2-3 losses are going to become 2-2 ties. So now we come to tie-breakers and if you read my blog, you know what I think of the tie-breakers the USTA uses.
For clarity, here are the rules for determining what team wins if the courts tie 2-2 as I understand them.
- Sets: Loser of the fewest number of sets
- Games: Loser of the fewest number of games
- Game Winning Percentage: Total games won divided by total games played
You see the same sets lost and games lost tie-breakers I've written about before. The good news is #3 is there taking into account games won as well at least, but being used after games lost it really won't have that large an impact and will often times not identify a winner as it will be the same for each team.
And what if it is still tied after #3? I have not heard but will try to find out.
There you have my thoughts. I don't think the change is a good idea for lots of reasons, and don't see any real benefit for the players in the new format. But what do you think?
Do you prefer the new 1 singles / 3 doubles or existing 2 singles / 3 doubles format for 40 & Over
Created with SurveyMaker
Following the potential money, the USTA might be thinking that this change will result in more individual players joining league play. For example, in leagues where there are currently 8 teams, you have 8 singles players who just lost a lot of playing time. Maybe those 8 players will create a new team - sure, they won't all get to play singles, but at least they'll get to play. But, of course, they'll need at least 3-4 more players to flesh out a full team, so they go an recruit them. Voila, USTA adds 3-4 new players/league fees. Multiply this times potentially hundreds of leagues and the money starts to add up.
ReplyDeleteI did try to think of the money angle like you did, and it could play out like you described, but it could also backfire. Consider many areas are smaller and at some levels may have only 4-5 teams and play a double round-robin. Say 5 teams and 15 players per team, that is 75 players. Say there is just one "odd man out" singles player on each team, that is 5 players that get dropped or quit the team due to no playing time and they still need to find another 10 players to form a 6th team. That is often times difficult, especially if these players want to have a competitive team and the result is these 5 may just quit and go play singles on their own. This would be a net loss.
DeleteYeah granted I'm in my 20s so this isn't relevant to me, but I agree I don't THINK there is a financial angle but of course your argument is certainly one to consider. Regardless, I've noticed usta in general just doesn't seem to "like", for lack of a better term, singles. Only summer season has singles which for people like me that are primarily singles players, and plan to continue to be into my 40s and beyond, is frustrating. Now they reduce that opportunity even more for 40s?
ReplyDeleteMy theory about this is the clubs make less money from singles because they pay the same amount for matches as doubles, but are of course only have two players paying per court as opposed to 4.
Yes, facilities have incentives to prefer doubles like you say. More players/members can be on court at the same time, and if there is a per-person fee for visitors, that goes up with doubles.
DeleteBut then I would have thought they'd do 1/4 and keep using 5 courts to get the revenue from the extra person. But that does use the 5th court which has downsides like I mentioned.
For our leagues that play indoors, the two singles courts and three doubles courts cost is totaled up and split evenly by the two teams . Yes, the doubles players help "Pay" for the singles court cost at the same rate. We have several indoor facilities with at least eight courts so USTA and WTT matches are staggered throughout the week and especially the weekend.
DeleteThis would be a terrible idea. USTA National really wants matches being decided by sets lost, etc. if tied 2-2? Every area is different, but overall, I don't see any good reasons for implementing this new rule.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't official, right? I don't see it in the rules yet.
It is official, at least at the National level. Whether it is adopted for your local leagues is up to your section/district/area.
DeleteOk. In your 'Note' in this article, you say 'I believe', which seems to imply it's not exactly official, so was thinking it wasn't yet. And I still don't see it listed for the 2020 USTA League Regulations Document. However, I see it listed in another 2020 Document about Major Changes: https://www.usta.com/content/dam/usta/sections/southwest/pdf/2020%20Major%20Changes%20USTA%20LEAGUE%20REGS.pdf
ReplyDeleteAs I'm reading this, it says only 1 Plus(+) player can play in a Plus(+) league that has four or less individual matches for a team match. So, does that only mean 1 5.0 player could play in a 40+ 4.5 match that only has 1 singles and 3 doubles courts? This new rule seems to be getting worse and worse.
I think when I wrote the blog I hadn't seen the doc, just an e-mail from an LC. But the new doc is now up at https://www.usta.com/en/home/organize/program-resources/national/resources---tools.html.
DeleteAnd I'd missed the four or less courts qualifier, so yes, that makes the 40+ 1/3 format even worse for plus players. Very few opportunities to play.
Isn't it true that the flaws in the tiebreak rules that you've addressed before do not arise when the tiebreak is applied head-to-head? The scenario where it's "better" to lose 6-0, 6-0 compared to 7-5, 7-5 only comes up when those losses are to other teams not involved in the tiebreak, because the team with the closer loss gets penalized for losing 14 games while getting no benefit from handing 10 game losses to the irrelevant other team. However, when applied in a head-to-head match like this, you always get credit for game wins because those are game losses for the opponent's team. So I think a close loss is always better than a blowout loss, and a blowout win is always better than a close win, at least for determining the head-to-head result. Is there a counter-example I'm not thinking of?
ReplyDeleteYes, when they are used for a solitary head-to-head match, they work ok. Because there are just two teams involved, they end up becoming sets and games differential implicitly which is what I've argued the tie-breakers should just be in the first place.
DeleteThe bigger issue in this case is that it is entirely possible, quite likely (relatively speaking) for there to be a tie on all stated criteria. Then what?
Would be interesting to check how often the all-criteria tie would have occurred in previous 2S/3D matches with the #2 singles result eliminated. I browsed through several dozen matches from my 2019 leagues and found just one example (which involved a defaulted doubles match scoring as 6-0, 6-0). Might as well call them ties like the NFL if they're about as rare. Then you'd just need additional criteria in a single-elimination playoff scenario, in which case some kind of "overtime" would be exciting - all four lines play an additional tiebreaker?
DeleteI'm not happy about losing 40+ singles opportunities, but the issue of the 2-2 match result does not bother me - in fact it would be cool to have more weight placed on the individual match scores and encourage us to fight for every set and every game. Perhaps that would make match scores more purely reflect ability and thus lead to better computer rankings.
I think it could also discourage lineup stacking, for example against a team with a very strong singles ringer. Normally you would not care if your sacrificial lamb lost 6-0, 6-0 to the other team's singles ringer, but with the tiebreak criteria looming, you might more strongly consider putting in your best singles player who can get some games off the ringer and give you a better chance of a 2-2 team win. Just a thought!
You make good points, and was already researching and thinking through these and more.
DeletePreliminarily, it looks like at last several hundred matches would have been ties at the end of all the tie-breakers presently documented so no winner. That clearly has to be resolved somehow.
But you are right it changes the dynamic of how to do a line-up and importance of every game.
On the plus side, in scenarios where the courts split 2-2, it makes that 3D match important even for the losing pair as an extra game won could mean a team win.
On the negative side, it means captains may be less willing to have weaker players on their roster or to play them as much as it is no longer just a lost court where the rest of the team (with 2 singles players in the 2/3 format) can still win 3 courts. Now that 3-2 win becomes 2-2 and the score on that 3D court matters and a captain may not play that weaker player as often or at all.
On stacking, it could almost encourage it more though. Stack and ensure a 3-1 win, or play straight and risk 2-2 where it goes to the tie-breaker. Aren't you going to be more likely to stack?
Now, it does take away the incentive for the weak team to stack in the hopes of a 2-2 tie instead of 1-3 loss as throwing the court will likely result in the 2-2 tie becoming a loss, but that team loses either way.
A loss is a loss, regardless of how close it is. Though you might be correct about fighting for every game, though I rarely see that not happening currently. WTT places emphasis on every game, but that's a different format than USTA. For USTA, full matches are being played, unlike WTT.
DeleteTies will occur during team tournament competition; they're unavoidable. But, do you really need ties for individual matches? People like to complain, sometimes warranted and sometimes not. The system that was already in place, worked great. I'm confused why they had to change it. And less playing time for players now.
You're right stacking might not happen as much now in those plus leagues, depending how good certain players are at singles/doubles. Though, I don't see much problems with stacking. While it might not be ideal to have a 4.0 play a 5.0 for singles for 4.5+ leagues, the team with the 4.0 should be allowed to put him anywhere in the lineup. The team unable to get a 5.0 or 2 or 3 is already at a big disadvantage, why should we penalize them even more?
Great points, and I agree that the change is puzzling and sad for 40+ players who love playing singles (I am one). I'm just not convinced that having an even number of lines is necessarily bad in and of itself. Certainly, if they were really convinced that five lines was too many, I'm happy they settled on four rather than going down to three just to make it an odd number.
ReplyDeleteOn stacking, I guess I was imagining that the team without the singles ringer is projecting a likely 2-2 result regardless of how they set their lineup - then maybe playing it straight would give them a better chance of winning than the stacking strategy, which would guarantee a blowout loss at singles that would be hard to make up for. Maybe that's an unrealistic scenario.
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. What would you choose for the 4th head-to-head tiebreak criterion?
What other sport has even number of games, matches, etc. to dictate a winner? Nowhere else in tennis do we see this either to my knowledge. Sure, ties can occur in soccer, NFL(on rare occasion in regular season), and hockey. But, each of those sports are setup differently. And each occurrence is an odd number(just one game). They're only ties because their rules have said they've played long enough already supposedly. And I'd argue they should have some format to dictate a winner that these games should never end in a tie. Nobody likes a tie either. In a sport where it's easily avoidable and unnecessary to ever have a tie like tennis, there's no reason to have one then.
DeleteI agree that ties are lame, but a 2-2 match will almost never be called a tie after the above criteria are applied to pick a winner. Pro tennis uses similar criteria for the ATP finals to break ties after the round robin stage. A win is a win but a straight-sets win is better than not, etc., not ideal but at least makes some sense to give credit to players that lost but kept it close. In the rare case that the above tiebreakers don't work, they should come up with something else that is guaranteed to pick a winner if they really want to avoid ties in the standings. Maybe give the team match win to the team that won the 1D court or something. I think having some kind of "overtime" would be fun but I don't know how you would implement that.
DeleteAgain, I completely agree that all this crap could be avoided if they just kept it at 2S/3D - the change does not make sense as this blog post nicely explains.
Ummm, there will be matches that remain tied after the tie-breakers are applied. Read my latest blog.
DeleteEven if you convince yourself having only one court of singles is ok, the rules lacking a definitive way to determine a winner where the standings are based on teams wins/losses is the big issue here. If they want to say use a coin flip, that is silly but at least something documented. Right now, there is nothing.
Great post! Your 3% result is higher than I'd guessed - thanks for crunching the numbers! They have some work to do to figure this out.
DeleteApplying the tiebreak scenarios for a single match is much different than with a tournament. There's no tiebreak scenarios needed to determine individual matches at the year-end finals. If 3 players are tied at 2-1 after RR, then naturally the 2 with best game winning pct. or fewest sets lost should trump the 3rd player. But each match has a winner and a loser.
DeleteIn the end, it comes down to winning and losing or should, if possible. Doesn't matter how much you win by or how much you lose by, at least for each match. Tiebreaks should only be needed if absolutely necessary. A team competition that is RR for example, will likely need tiebreak scenarios because they're necessary. However, tiebreaks aren't necessary for each match in that competition. We're now saying tying 2-2 is either a win or a loss, and that's not true. If, for example there's 4 teams that play RR, with 3 tying at 2-1, we need tiebreak scenarios to determine 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. None of the teams, however, are getting a loss or a win for tying. If you don't lose and go 3-0, winning 0-6, 7-6, 7-6 is the same as winning 6-0, 6-0. You control your own destiny. However, if you lose, you no longer do. Which now a team can actually not lose even once tying each match 2-2, and hypothetically could finish the season with no credited wins.
Feedback from one of our Captains that reflects an overwhelming sense of frustration here in the PNW. We are canvasing our PNW USTA management to hopefully recognize the harm this will cause in so mnay ways to the game and spirit of the game.....
ReplyDelete"IT'S RIDICULOUS! All it did was to add confusion. If teams can't get singles courts, then why not just do what 2.5s do (i.e., 1S, 2D)? All this did was to take away opportunity for playing singles. 18-39's now have the World Tennis mixed league (2S, 2D, and 1Mixed) while our 40+ league is underway. If 40+ is so desperate to change to able team to field courts, then why not do this mixed team format? For the 40+ season, I'm leaning towards sitting it out and play tournament tennis instead. I get my doubles fix from 55+ league. PNW could keep its old 2S, 3D format, and in the National tournament, we could go along with 1S, 3D format since the group going to National match would be smaller than the entire team. My two cents.
I did hear from one facility directory that they would prefer 3 courts. Be careful what you wish for!
DeleteHere is my issue. I captain a 4.5+ womens team. That means only one 5.0 player can play in the match and they must play in either the singles or #1 doubles spot. Most likely, they play the singles spot. I have a difficult time finding 5.0's to play on my team. If I only have a 4.5 singles player, she will most likely play against 5.0's all season. How fair is that to her? At least with the 2s 3D format, she could at least guarantee a fair singles match at #2 singles against a 4.5 player or 4.0 player playing up. And I also know that 4.0's playing up at 4.5+ are not allowed to play singles. I get that the 5.0's don't want to play against 4.0's because they are too easy. But I also had a year where all my 4.5's were doubles players and my two 4.0's were singles players. In this case, I would have to force my 4.5's who don't like to play singles, to play a singles match and get destroyed because they are not singles players. I just think this new rule is an injustice to the 4.5 singles players at the 4.5+ level.
ReplyDeleteI think the USTA should make a singles league with 3 courts in a match. I know a lot of people who would play.
Last week, the PNW USTA sent out a FAQ detailing how they got to the 1S/3D format.
ReplyDeletePer the FAQ...
“In April 2019, a survey was sent to players age 39 and over, asking which “team match” championship format they preferred, and results showed 25% for 1S/4D; 26% for 1S/3D; 39% for 2S/3D; ie. greater than 50% preferred only one singles match.”
Can you believe the gall in passing off these stats and asking a human with a functioning brain to accept the 1S/3D format as a solution?!?!?! Get outta here!
USTA: You can't give people three options in a survey and then choose the option that you (the surveyor) prefers by cherry-picking the stats and bogusing the numbers. Sure, if the survey choices add the results of 1S/3D and 1S/4D, it's 51%....but that wasn't the option!!!!
IF WE'RE PLAYING BY THOSE RULES OF YOUR SILLY SURVEY, THEN 64% PREFER 5 COURTS PER MATCH (instead of 40).
Gimme a break. Most of us are full-functioning adults of 39+ years...please USTA, don't treat me like a pre-adolescent who can't see through your solution (1S/3D) that found its own problem.
I agree. #badmath
DeleteI just found out about the the only 1 singles player and I say hallelujah! It is hard to find enough singles players. I have to beg ladies to play that line and it stinks. I don’t want to play it either and I feel bad asking someone to play singles when i know they hate it. Singles is a different game and no one who doesn’t play/practice singles a lot wants to do it. Many teams have everyone take a turn at singles to take one for the team. Not fun for anyone either. If they are wanting to move up its a double whammy, a loss and possibly a big hit to your rating, since singles and doubles ratings aren’t separated. At the end of the season it is especially unwelcome. Also if you do have a great singles player they are kind of stuck playing the singles line all the time even if they want to play doubles too, since no one else wants to and if you are a competitive team, you don't want the loss. Even if someone is willing to play, if they don't play singles but twice a year they are likely to lose. Since most singles players in our area generally just play singles. And they play that line every week. My experience is the ladies who play singles have played when they were young and not taken up the game later in life, like most of the players i know. In Colorado the 40+ season is mid June until the end of July. It is 92* at match start time not including the heat from the courts. 105* on the court? Playoffs and districts are during the day which is even worse especially with the searing high altitude sun. I know ladies who have had heat stroke on the court. No heat rules here and its not like we are professional athletes. It’s also prime summer vacation time so if you are lucky and have 2 singles players, its a bummer when they are both away on vacation. Which is not uncommon. I play at a decent sized club and we have 3, 3.5 ladies 40+ teams of about 13-15 players. So its not like we have opportunities to play a lot of matches since the teams are so big. They’d rather not play than play than play the singles line and it seems to be the consensus of the other teams in the area as well. There is also stiff competition to get singles players on your team. It’s not pretty. The tie thing is a problem but I hope they figure something out. One singles line is what I and many others have been hoping for! 18+ is easier in our district for having 2 singles lines. School is in session still and its not quite yet time summer for vacations so most of the team is available. It also is much cooler weather since it ends in early June.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment and your perspective.
DeleteWhat about those teams that do have two singles players and want to play singles? Or are there just none of those in your area?
And do players not have any desire to play singles and give it a shot or stretch themselves and try to improve their singles game? With just one singles court, this opportunity to do so is kind of gone.
And if you really are that short on players wanting singles, would you support just doing away with it and making it three doubles courts like 55+?
And you said your teams were reasonably large already, with one fewer spot for each match (just 7 players per match), are you going to struggle getting everyone playing time? Or will you have a smaller roster to compensate?
I stringly disagree with these changes as do, it would appear, the majority of ONW NWW Captains from the research we have seen. If we had to change this format (which on the whole worked well apart from some smaller regions it would appear), then at least go to 1S/4D to help increase playing time. Tennis is growing, the USTA is popular competition and in one go, we REDUCE playing opportunites by nearly 15% when teams are growing and have been growing.... Come on USTA, recognize this major flaw and the flaw in the terrible way you justified this decision....
DeleteA large group of players and team captains across the PNW region have expressed strong opposition to this change in the 40+ format. Below is a summary of the letter that we sent to the USTA which clearly outlines our opposition to this move and also the results of a survey of over 300 players across the USTA PNW. We did not get any response back from the USTA National office (despite two requests) which was disappointing but did hear back from Adam Hutchinson form the USTSA PNW office outlining that there would not be a change in the decision, despite the clear opposition in the PNW. Please do read the summary and the link to the main document with all the research and feel free to forward or comment.
ReplyDeleteLink to main letter from Captains of the USTA PNW to the USTA PNW/Nationals Office.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jnkxqsa6jmoak08/USTA%20Letter%2010-31-2109%20.pdf?dl=0
Summary of the main letter and research:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xq4twnuo89est91/USTA%20Letter%2010-31-2109%20Summary.pdf?dl=0
NOTE: Since the letter was sent to the USTA, a decision has been communicated about a 'points per court' system to avoid a 2-2 tie in a match'.