Week Three of 2022 USTA League Nationals Recap

I am late writing this recap, but A) there was a lot to write about, and B) everything wasn't official for a few days.

It was an eventful weekend, and not only because it was the busiest weekend of Nationals with four different events going.  The 18 & Over division continued with the 3.0 and 4.0 levels in two different Arizona locations, the 40 & Over 4.5s in Oklahoma City, and 55 & Over got started with the 7.0 level in Orlando.

Let's start with the easy ones.

The 55 & Over 7.0 women had a reasonably tidy set of four semi-finalists with Florida and PNW 4-0 and Southern and MOValley 3-1 and a court ahead of the closest pursuer.  Just PNW was a bit of a surprise, the simulation had the other three among the favorites.  MOValley and Southern won their semis and Southern took the title.

The 7.0 men had four undefeated teams in SoCal, Texas, New England, and Southern, with that last team winning every match 2-1.  New England was the minor surprise here, the other three all among the favorites in the simulation.  SoCal and Texas won to play the final where SoCal won.

Next, the 40 & Over 4.5 women saw three 4-0 teams in Hawaii, SoCal, and Mid-Atlantic, joined by New England.  Three of these teams were in the simulation's top-7.  New England and Mid-Atlantic won to face in the final with Mid-Atlantic winning, just one week after a similar team won 18 & Over 4.5, so quite a run.

The 4.5 men had four 4-0 teams in Southern, NorCal, Florida, and SoCal advancing.  All four teams were in the simulation's top-6.  The semis saw two 2-2 "wins" with SoCal beating Southern on the games tie-breaker and Florida beating NorCal the same way.  Florida then won the final 3-1.

Now, it gets more interesting.  Why you ask?  Well, it rained in Arizona.  And interestingly despite the two sites being on other sides of Phoenix less than an hour apart, the 4.0 events were more severely affected, not being able to get more than one set of matches completed on Saturday.  The 3.0 events I believe went to short sets, but did manage to get their round-robin done and semis/finals played on Sunday.

For the 3.0 women, there were three 4-0 teams in Southern, PNW, and Caribbean, with Intermountain beating out NorCal for the last spot on the sets tie-breaker.  Interestingly, NorCal won a far higher percentage of games but lost two more sets.  Three of these were in the favorites from the simulation.  The semis saw Southern and Caribbean both win 3-2 and Southern took the title.

The 3.0 men had three 4-0 teams with a clearly best 3-1 team advancing in fourth.  Southern beat Midwest 3-2 and Intermountain did the same vs PNW.  In the final, Southern won 3-2.

Now, the 4.0 event.  With only one time-slot completed and that just men, and the second slot started but not finished, the rain came.  They got back out briefly to try to play again but that was halted and play was called for the day.  With so little of day two played, there was no way to play the event as originally planned.  I had ideas about completing a few matches and taking the top-8 to quarter-finals, and some other ideas too after teams completed their third matches, but the USTA elected to simply have everyone play short set matches and play out the schedule and to name the top-4 teams in the standings the first thru fourth place finishers.  This resulted in everyone getting their minimum four matches which was good, but did not allow the champ to be decided head to head on the court.

For the 4.0 women though, it didn't even work out as well as they had hoped, as what I feared, some teams not showing up for their last match or defaulting courts, happened.  When this happens it messes with standings and teams that got full match defaults benefit while the teams that had to play the team that defaulted are penalized in the standings, so some team matches that were completed were disregarded in order to make things equitable.  But with the defaults and disregarded matches, this left some teams with just three matches played, and one with just two.  TennisLink's standings are frankly broken, as they show 3-1 teams ahead of a 3-0 team, so the USTA told teams they'd figure it out in a day or two and notify teams the results.  I believe some teams were allowed to take pictures with several different banners to cover their bases on what they would decide.

Ultimately, while TennisLink still shows the order as SoCal, New England, Southwest (all 4-0) with MOValley fourth at 3-1 and a 3-0 PNW team listed as 7th, the order they told teams they arrived at was SoCal, Southwest, New England, and PNW.  I think this factored in reversing some matches for the defaulting teams, but also gave PNW credit for being undefeated.  It is sad that with four undefeated teams it couldn't be decided on the court.

The 4.0 men did complete their round-robin without any full team defaults, and they had three 4-0 teams in Intermountain, Mid-Atlantic, and SoCal at 4-0 with Southern at 3-1.  This was the order which again was sad given the undefeated teams were 19-1, 18-2, and 17-3 on courts.  Yes, Mid-Atlantic had an easier schedule, but it would have been nice to see this decided on the court.

So there you have it.  A strange weekend of Nationals, but on to the next with 40 & Over and 18 & Over both wrapping up with 40 & Over 3.0 in Surprise and 18 & Over 5.0 in Scottsdale.  55 & Over continues in Orlando with the 8.0 level.