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?