PNW Seattle giving new playoff format another shot for 2021 18 & Over Mixed

Before COVID-19 ended our 40 & Over season in the Seattle area, we were working our way towards a new local playoff format.

I wrote much more at the time, but the short story is in a league where the 1st and 2nd place team in each sub-flight advance to playoffs, the new local playoff format places all the 1st place teams in one draw and all the second place teams in the other.  The winner of the 1st place team draw advances to Sectionals, while the loser of that match plays the winner of the 2nd place team draw for the chance to advance to Sectionals as a wildcard.

I wasn't terribly fond of the format then, and while we didn't get a chance to see it in practice yet, I'm still leery of it for the simple reason that it doesn't seem to reward 1st place teams enough.  While by making the final of the 1st place bracket they assure themselves of an extra shot at advancing even if they lose that final, they still have to make it to the final by winning one or two matches and do so against other first place teams.  One can almost make the argument that it may be easier to win two matches in the 2nd place bracket against 2nd place teams to make that final, and the have to play only one first place team, and that being one that could be playing their 4th match of the weekend at that point.

What do you think?

It is 2020, anything could happen, could the NTRP as we know it be going away?

Preface: This post is highly speculative, but is based on a little reading of the tea leaves and I think could happen, so it is worth the speculation to think about.

The NTRP system has been around for many years, far longer than I've been playing USTA League, and has gone through a variety of algorithm changes and periodic mass adjustments, but in general has worked very well for promoting competitive adult recreational competition.

But in the last few years, NTRP has been under increasing pressure from UTR, particularly with junior, collegiate, and lower level pro tournaments.  This is where UTR started and is strong, and while the USTA introduced the Junior NTRP, it is different and not connected to Adult NTRP and it appears has not gained the traction UTR has, at least in this segment.

The U in UTR is "Universal" and to be truly universal one has to have results from all matches, and UTR is aiming to do that and for the past few years has been scraping USTA matches from TennisLink and including them in their calculations.  This is where UTR is differentiated from NTRP, in that it calculates ratings for USTA League players plus all the juniors and collegiate players it always has, and includes ATP, WTA, and other pro tour matches, and I'm sure more.  One can debate how well UTR accomplishes a single universal rating with what are almost certainly disconnected populations of players, but the USTA with NTRP doesn't even attempt to incorporate matches outside of USTA play.

Perhaps in response to UTR, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) along with other governing bodies from the United States (USTA), England (LTA), and France (FFT) launched plans for the World Tennis Number (WTN) about a year ago.  I wrote my observations on the WTN after that.  The original press release called for WTN to be live in late 2019 and launched in participating organization's countries in 2020, but the WTN site still says "Coming Soon ...".

Another interesting connection here is that the ITF has contracted with Club Spark to build the platform for WTN, which happens to be the same company working on what is believed to be the replacement for TennisLink (and more).  What appears to be some of the "and more" is even live today at https://playtennis.usta.com.

So, if participating countries are to be adopting it soon, what about the USTA and NTRP?

With the same company that is implementing WTN also building the new TennisLink, it might seem easy for the USTA to perhaps decide to give NTRP a "make over" and just switch to using the WTN.  With the WTN being on a completely different scale (40 to 1 rather than effectively 2.0 to 7.0) this would seem to be a pretty radical change and a risky thing to do with a large population of adult league and tournament players used to the NTRP system.

It is possible the USTA would phase the WTN in, either publishing in parallel or using it for various segments of play, perhaps starting with juniors, then moving on to collegiate players and lower level pro-tour events, all to be aligned with the ITF and other countries and their use of the WTN.  In this scenario, it might find its way to USTA league and tournament players later, or again published in parallel to get people used to it.

This is where it gets interesting though.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated cancelation of many USTA leagues, nearly every Sectionals, and Nationals, the USTA decided to not publish year-end NTRP ratings for 2020.  I understand there may have been some within the USTA that wanted to go ahead and publish, but they were overruled.  In fact, rumor has it some changes have been made regarding the group responsible for NTRP ratings oversight within the USTA so changes appear to be afoot.

As part of this change, is it possible the USTA didn't want to publish 2020 year-end ratings because a switch to use WTN is coming in 2021 and it would be confusing to players to have just published year-end ratings in 2020 when rolling out a new system in 2021?  By not publishing 2020 year-end ratings might we see WTN rolled out by the end of 2021 and league play in 2021 while be NTRP's swan song?

I obviously don't know the answer, only those at the USTA do and perhaps even the USTA hasn't made final decisions on if and when changes are made.  But we've been waiting for a new TennisLink for years, and it just feels like it finally arriving, the launch of WTN, and the same company doing both, we could have a big bang of change coming in 2021, perhaps for 2022 league play.

What do you think?  How would you receive a change to the rating system used for tournament and league play?

Is your 2021 40 & Over USTA League sticking with 4 courts?

The 2020 USTA League season never had a chance to complete with very few areas even able to complete their local league, let alone much of any playoffs.  As a result, means the new (for 2020) 4-court format with one court of singles and three of doubles for the 40 & Over leagues never got to be fully exercised and we never had a chance to see how it would work through playoffs.

My section (PNW) was one that said they'd survey players after the season so opinions would be based on a full season, and a survey was done, but with the COVID-19 suspension of play and no Nationals, USTA National didn't change anything and so my guess is most sections still stick with the same format and rules for 2021 as they had for 2020.

And in fact, in my area the e-mails went out about starting to form teams for 2021 and it was confirmed we will use the same format.

Now, a change I wrote about earlier is that the 40 & Over leagues will no longer have plus-flights, meaning there will be no 4.5+ flights and instead it will just be a straight 4.5 flight with no 5.0s on the rosters.  So that is one new wrinkle for 2021 and it won't be exactly like 2020.

I was critical of the 4-court format change when it happened, partly because it allowed for 2-2 ties with horribly broken tie-breakers, and still feel largely the same, and most agreed with me.  But what do you think now?  Was the 4-court format not so bad after-all?  Has your opinion changed as we head into 2021?