Through February 14 there were at least 23 of these ties, and through today the total is over 30, and we discovered months ago that TennisLink was broken and was incorrectly using the season game winning percentage (GWP) instead of the team-match GWP in the tie-breaker and still nothing changed.
Well, it appears the USTA finally got the message that this was broken with players being confused and the wrong team being declared the winner in some of these situations. A regulation change has been made to add to the tie-breakers used when a team match is tied 2-2. I have not seen an official regulations document with this change, but sections are sending e-mail to players saying they are adopting a change made by National so I'm pretty sure this is accurate information.
The current documented tie-breakers should a team match be tied 2-2 are:
- Fewest sets lost
- Fewest games lost
- Game winning percentage in the match (pointless, will always be 50% for each team if it gets to this)
Note that TennisLink actually uses the current season GWP for each team and not the GWP in the match which is incorrect. TennisLink also appears to currently award the win to the visiting team if the teams are tied on GWP. So teams have been awarded wins to-date that are arguably wrong.
The change is to add giving the win to the team that won court 1 doubles if they are still tied. One can probably debate the merits of this, but it is at least known in advance and will determine a winner, where to this point, it has been fuzzy and unclear.
This change is what should be used at Nationals, and sections have the discretion to follow suit or do their own thing, but it appears at least some are following suit as they are notifying players of the change.
In the notification to players, I've heard that TennisLink is supposed to be changed to match the new regulation by the end of February. I do not know if they are also fixing the GWP tie-breaker to use the match GWP rather than season GWP, but I hope they do as adding this new tie-breaker without fixing GWP has little value.
The outstanding question is if the tie-breaker change will be retroactive or not. My guess is that it won't be as at least one communication asked players to wait until the end of this week to enter their results if they had a 2-2 tie so that the new rule would be applied. If it is indeed not retroactive, that is a shame as it means a changing set of rules will have been used during the season and this could affect standings and who advances to playoffs.
As far as the merits of the change, I do like that we finally have something that will deterministically identify a winner. I do question if using court 1 doubles is the best court to use as it further marginalizes singles and using the singles court could have helped give it more meaning. But using court 1 doubles does help to discourage stacking as a team is less likely to sacrifice that court knowing it is the tie-breaker should it get to that, and this is probably a good thing.
Note of course that all this only applies to leagues that are using team wins for standings. Those that are using points per position are not affected. But of course, once you get to playoff draws where team wins matter, it should apply to all.
What do you think? Are you satisfied with this resolution to a gaping hole in the regulations?
No. Not really satisfied. What should happen is that 40+ division should remain a 5-line format, but with 4 courts of doubles and 1 singles. This would resolve the tie issue while also accommodating the 40+ group preference for doubles play.
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