Thursday, August 27, 2020

USTA NorCal cancels all remaining 2020 and early start 2021 leagues

USTA League play has resumed in the majority of sections in one form or another.  NorCal was an exception with the plan being to resume play in September, but the section just notified players that is no longer the case and all 2020 Adult League play has been canceled.

In addition, a few areas normally have early start leagues in the Fall for the following year, and all of those 2021 leagues have been postponed.

I'm sure this was a hard decision, but one forced by the situation with COVID-19 and current restrictions in California.  You might ask how is SoCal playing some matches?  Play there is very limited and only in some areas, and there may be local rules allowing or restricting play, and it appears NorCal thought trying to play in some areas and not others, or having to adapt as restrictions play was not in the best interest of league play.
"With state, county and city orders and guidelines changing and potentially becoming more restrictive than the last without notice, the number of temporary rule changes, continuous play adjustments and the resulting disruption would not allow for the player-friendly and inviting league experience the Adult League Department aims for."

While it appears Flex Leagues are available for play, the plan is for play to resume for 2021 at the beginning of the year, but that of course is subject to change.

Stay safe everyone.

Sunday, August 23, 2020

How has COVID-19 affected Fall Early Start Leagues in Seattle?

In my area, Seattle, we have 2021 early start leagues beginning in a couple weeks, specifically 18 & Over Mixed and 55 & Over Adult.  These have been routinely played in this same slot for a number of years, which means we can look at trends on participation and compare to this year to see how things may be changing.

The obvious reason things may change is COVID-19, and I just wrote about some new scoring rules we will be using in the Pacific Northwest section because of it, and it is natural to look at these trends and see if there is an impact due to the pandemic and player's behavior or willingness to play.

First as a baseline, I looked at the 2017 through 2020 league years for 18 & Over Mixed and here are the number of teams and unique players signed up:
  • 2017 - 172 / 2,265
  • 2018 - 180 / 2,311
  • 2019 - 179 / 2,327
  • 2020 - 173 / 2,249

While there is some variation, the numbers are pretty consistent so let's take the average of 176 teams and 2,288 players as representative.

For this Fall's 2021 league season, all the teams are signed up and there are just 141, down 20% from the average of the last 4 seasons.  The number of players is just 1,253 but the season hasn't started yet and more players will sign up, so it is a little preliminary to compare that number.

I also looked at the 55 & Over Adult league.  Here are the historical stats:
  • 2017 - 84 / 1,034
  • 2018 - 92 / 1,126
  • 2019 - 105 / 1,249
  • 2020 - 114 / 1,383

There is some clear growth here, so for comparison I'll use the most recent stats from 2020.  But arguably it was on track to be north of 120 teams.

For this Fall's 2021 league season, the 55 & Over Adult has just 87 teams, down 24% from 2020 but again, perhaps down more from where it might have been.

These sort of changes are rarely due to a single reason, but I think we can point to COVID-19 as the reason this year.  Whether players are concerned about the risks of playing and interacting with others outside their family/personal circle, or their personal situation has changed to not allow playing, there is clearly a decline in those electing to participate in these leagues this Fall.

Whether you are in Seattle and part of the above stats, or playing (or not) elsewhere, why are you planning to play (or not) this Fall and into 2021?

And if there are other areas with early start leagues you'd like me to look at, leave a comment here or on Facebook.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

USTA Pacific Northwest to use timed matches for 2021 Early Start (2020) Fall leagues

USTA League has resumed in nearly all sections to varying degrees, but with no Nationals this year the majority of play is essentially just for fun and to get back out on the courts playing tennis again.

But in one area (Georgia), play has started for 2021 with early start leagues, and other sections will do the same this Fall, PNW where I am, being one.

In most districts in PNW, the Fall early start leagues are Mixed 18 & Over and Adult 55 & Over, but regardless, in my district (Seattle) our League Coordinator just notified us of a format change for the Fall leagues compared to what we've done in the past.

In PNW, particularly for non-Summer leagues, we tend to play USTA League indoors.  It isn't true  that it rains all the time here, but particularly in the Winter it is too cold/wet to play outdoors consistently, and even in the Spring and Fall it can be hit and miss and rather than having scheduling issues, we just have leagues scheduled indoors.

The challenge with this is indoor facilities generally have fixed court times, usually 90 minutes in my area but at a club or two it is 75 minutes.  Not every match ends in the allotted amount of time though, so how does one handle that?

Many clubs will provide or ask that the home team book an overflow court to be used to complete any matches not finished after 90 (75) minutes so as to not delay the subsequent booked courts (which are often another league match).  Some clubs do allow a match some leeway, say 10-15 minutes, for a match to finish on the court they are on if they are nearly complete.

Most of the time this works, but sometimes matches don't finish and there is no court available, and then the players in the match must arrange to finish the match at a later date.  This is kind of a pain, but rare enough that we deal with it.

In this time of trying to play league matches during the COVID-19 pandemic though, the above process is problematic for several reasons.

Clubs are trying to avoid players congregating and limit the interaction and exposure players have to each other, so having a situation where teams are waiting around for prior matches to finish, or players are switching courts and increasing their exposure to others is not ideal, and may even violate current state protocols or restrictions.  If the latter were to happen and be reported, it is possible a state could elect to ban the scenarios required for league play at all and we'd have suspended seasons again.

Also, asking players to hang around and figure out when/where to complete a match, or just the act of doing so is also increasing exposure and risk so that is not desired.

You will note that while timed matches are a valid USTA format, the process I noted PNW uses did not call for the use of them.  That is now changing, and at least for the Fall of 2020, we will have timed matches.

Since we haven't had timed matches in PNW, my readers there, or others where they haven't been used, may be wondering what exactly it is.  The answer, basically, is that a process is established for how to determine a winner at or near the end of the allotted time if the match will not complete.  The process is not the same in every area using timed matches, but here is the gist of what PNW will use this Fall as I understand it.

If a match is completed, it is entered as a completed match as is normally done.

If, when time expires, a match is not completed, it is entered as a timed-match with the score reflecting all completed games.

If a game is in progress when time expires, it does not count.  However, a point in progress when time expires is completed and does count.  If the completion of the final point results in a game being completed, that game counts.

The winner of a timed match is the player(s) that won the most games.  If the match score is tied on games, a single deciding point is played following the normal serving sequence when time expired, and the receiver gets choice of side unless it is mixed doubles and then it is gender to gender.  The winner of this point will be declared the winner.

If a first set or match tie-break is in progress, the player(s) leading in the tie-break is declared the winner.  If the score is tied in the tie-break, a deciding point is played as noted above.

There are some edge cases not covered with what I just wrote and am trying to get clarification on how it will work and will provide an update and example scenarios in another post so stay tuned.

What do you think?  Do you like timed-matches and wish PNW would have been using them for time constrained matches all along?  Are they ok as a temporary measure to appease the state so we can play?  Or do you hate the idea regardless of the scenario?

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Is the end of TennisLink for USTA League near? Yes and no ...

It has been rumored for many years that TennisLink is on its last legs and soon to be replaced.  Yet here we are in 2020 still using it for USTA leagues and tournaments.  But is the end near?

It is not a secret that the USTA has been working on a replacement for the past couple years, there are mentions of a new Tennis Event Product or Serve Tennis around and it appears Club Spark is the company working on it.  But I've recently heard that players will see it first as Tennis Management Tools (TMT) targeting USTA tournaments and likely launch in 2021.

Now, some information I've seen indicated it was supposed to launch in 2020, perhaps some pieces even in 2019, so 2021 is certainly no guarantee, but I'm sure COVID-19 and other events have contributed to the slip to 2021.

Features I believe are planned include:
  • Facility Management
  • Social Leagues
  • Drop-in Events
  • Tennis on Campus
  • Net Generation Events
  • Sanctioned and Non-Sanctioned Tournaments

You will notice I don't include USTA Leagues, but I'm sure it is on the roadmap and just wasn't in the near term goals I saw, although my guess is not until 2022 or later.  So I expect we'll be using TennisLink for at least another full year+ for leagues.

By starting with tournaments, the USTA may be trying to go head to head with UTR and their platform for tournaments.  It will be interesting to see how they compare and if tournament directors choose one or the other to setup and manage their tournaments.

Note that part of what is coming is already here to some degree.  See https://playtennis.usta.com/ where organizations and individual providers can setup accounts and seemingly have a web-site and manage contacts and interacting with them.  Nothing really on leagues and tournaments and some of the other items above, nor anything for players, but I'm sure it is in the works.

It is encouraging to see some progress being made, although it appears it is still early and resources for tournament and league players are still a little ways off.  Stay tuned as I learn more.

Monday, August 10, 2020

Will there be 2020 USTA League year-end ratings? Still to be determined 😕

USTA League play was suspended for several months, and even though it has resumed in a number of areas, there will be no Nationals this year, and in most sections it appears Sectionals and lower rounds of playoffs may not happen either.

A natural question then becomes, what will happen with year-end ratings for 2020?  I wrote my thoughts on the subject a couple months ago and have asked questions and been on the lookout for any indication of what might happen, but heard today that the USTA has not made a decision one way or the other yet.

There are pros and cons to publishing ratings, although I fall on the side of seeing more pros in doing the publishing, at least on a limited basis.  I did run a poll in my earlier post and here are the results as I write this today.


While there is not a clear cut consensus, it does seem more players are wanting ratings calculated than not, with 63% wanting them calculated, perhaps with limited matches and/or more lenient appeal thresholds.  Just 22% voted an outright no, with another 14% with qualified no's.

It may be the USTA knows, or at least has a good idea, what they will do and is just waiting to announce so that leagues are played with a little doubt to prevent all out tanking of matches in the event matches played now do count.  For now though, we wait and see.

For what is is worth, I got this news indirectly via an NTRP Ratings webinar National (Heather Hawkes) put on for NorCal.  Thanks to my NorCal readers for the info and it is good to see National is continuing with this webinar series which Heather has been doing across all the sections the past few years.

Monday, August 3, 2020

USTA League changes for 2021 - Plus flights are gone!

The USTA typically publishes the regulations for the upcoming year,  at least in draft form, in the Spring,  but with COVID-19 affecting things it ended up being late July this year.  While I recommend that you get/read the full doc, I'm sure many of you just want to know "What changed?".

For those of you in that camp, here is a summary.

First, the big change is plus flights appear to be gone.  As a reminder, these were flights at the top of each division (5.0 for 18 & Over and 4.5 for 40 & Over) that were designated 5.0+ and 4.5+ and allowed teams to roster and play 5.5 and 5.0 players respectively.  This was done to give the 5.5/5.0 players more playing opportunity as in many areas, there was not critical mass to have a 18 & Over 5.5/Open flight and/or 40 & Over 5.0 flight.  In order to have the plus players play against each other, they were required to play on court 1 (singles or doubles).

The problem is, while plus flights could work well, they introduced some issues.  The main one was that a team may not have a plus player on their roster, or not available for a match, and that led to throwing court 1 at times, which was just a waste of time for the plus player.  This was especially true when say a 4.5+ team without a 5.0 for a match would have a 4.0 playing up play a 5.0 in singles.  Even when 5.0s were rostered and available, they could play in singles or doubles so wouldn't always face each other, which could lead to uncompetitive matches even when a court wasn't being thrown.

Several sections had been lobbying for changes or getting rid of plus flights, and some had tried to impose restrictions saying players playing up couldn't play on court 1 in plus flights.  But now that is no longer an issue as plus flights are gone.

What happens to those plus players without a flight now?  The regulations do appear to allow for sections and areas to have an 18 & Over Open flight and 40 & Over 5.0 flight for these players, and even have playoffs through Sectionals, there just won't be a Nationals for those levels.

My view is this does remove the problems noted above, but may leave some players without a league to play in as not all areas will be able to have Open and 5.0 flights due to limited players at those levels.  If you are a 40+ 5.0, your only option may be playing against the youngsters in 18 & Over.

Second, there are some changes to appeal rules for senior players.  The past few years, those 60+ could appeal down a bump up if they'd been at the same level for 3 years, and those 65+ could auto-appeal down a bump up if they were not higher than the "clearly above" threshold.  Now, those 70+ have their own rule, they can just auto-appeal down whether bumped up or not, as long as they are not higher than the "clearly above" threshold.

This "clearly above" threshold probably needs some explanation.  Normally, appeal rules do allow for someone to appeal down if they are just over the bump threshold, typically something less than 0.1.  The clearly above threshold is higher than that, it varies by level but you can assume something like 0.2-0.3 over the threshold.

This means someone 70+ that is a 4.0 but has been struggling but stays a 4.0 can appeal down to 3.5 more easily than before.

I think this change probably makes sense, although it is probably pretty rare that a 70+ player has played and is struggling and doesn't get bumped down or is low enough to appeal under the normal rules.

Third, last year brought a 4-court format for 40 & Over at the National level and there was much consternation about it and how 2-2 ties would be broken.  It was discovered TennisLink was somewhat broken and there were undocumented rules for how ties were broken, and National finally clarified things after more than 30 ties occurred.

Now, that clarification is in the regulations.  They state that for Nationals, 40 & Over will be 4-courts and ties broken ultimately by the winner of court 1 doubles.  Of course they still list game winning percentage as a criteria which will always be 50% for both teams, so it is meaningless.  But at least they have something there to break the tie where last year they didn't.

Note, this clearly means the 4-court format is here for another year at least.  Lots of folks rallied against it but it is no surprise that National is sticking to their guns since it won't get a full test in 2020 with no Nationals and many areas perhaps not even holding their leagues.

That is it for the big changes.  There are a few other small ones of note, those being:
  • There have been a few cases where teams showed up to playoffs without the minimum required players.  The regulations allow for waivers, language has now been added to presumably limit waivers being granted as "Waivers are only intended for extreme circumstances" now appears in the document.
  • Miscellaneous changes to align with the removal of plus flights.

Not a lot of changes, but with an abbreviated season I wouldn't have expected many.

What do you think?

Is USTA Tennis back for 2020? Where league matches are being played during the COVID-19 pandemic

When COVID-19 hit the US this Spring, tennis was hit hard with play at all levels and disciplines suspended or impacted.  The USTA suspended all sanctioned play for several months and canceled USTA League Nationals, but even upon resumption left it up to sections on how and when to resume.

This has led to varying degrees of resumption, so I thought I'd take a look to see where league matches are being played.  In rough order of matches played since May it is:
  • Southern
  • Intermountain
  • Midwest
  • Texas
  • Missouri Valley
  • Mid-Atlantic
  • <the above all over 1000 team matches played>
  • Southwest
  • Florida
  • Eastern
  • Northern
  • Middle States
  • Pacific Northwest
  • Southern Cal
  • New England
  • Hawaii

The only sections missing are NorCal and Caribbean, my understanding is NorCal is looking to resume league play in September.

So play has resumed, Southern and Intermountain are each over 4,000 team matches played.

How is play where you are?  Are you playing league matches?  Are you holding off to be safe?