With that in mind, I thought I'd summarize what we've observed from league play using the format the past few years.
First, in league play, in the 2021 championship year, of the 27,795 team matches played, 7,215 (26%) were tied 2-2 with 2,934 (41%) of those being tied on sets and of those, 249 (8.4%) were tied on games and went to the winner of court 1 doubles.
In league play, in the 2022 championship year, of the 33,694 team matches played, 8.766 (26%) were tied 2-2 with 3,443 (39%) of those being tied on sets and of those, 315 (9.1%) were tied on games and went to the winner of court 1 doubles.
Nationals is where it can really come into play where the tie-breakers decide important matches. While the format was put in place for 2020, there were no Nationals that year so we start this summary with 2021.
At 2021 40 & Over Nationals, there were 292 team matches played with 84 (29%) of them ending in a 2-2 tie. Of those, 31 (37%) were tied on sets, and of those, 3 (9.7%) were tied on games and went to the winner of court 1 doubles.
At 2022 40 & Over Nationals, there were 298 team matches played with 72 (24%) of them ending in a 2-2 tie. Of those, 25 (35%) were tied on sets, and of those, 4 (16%) were tied on games and went to the winner of court 1 doubles.
If we summarize it all then, we get:
| Season | Tied 2-2 | Sets Tied | Games Tied |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 Regular Season | 26% | 41% (11%) | 8.4% (0.90%) |
| 2021 Nationals | 29% | 37% (11%) | 9.7% (1.0%) |
| 2022 Regular Season | 26% | 39% (10%) | 9.1% (0.93%) |
| 2022 Nationals | 24% | 35% (8.4%) | 16% (1.3%) |
In the above I'm showing the same percentages from the paragraph, plus in parenthesis I'm showing the percentage of all team matches played as well.
This shows a pretty consistent trend of a quarter or a bit more of team matches ending in 2-2 ties, around 10% of all of them being tied on sets, and around 1% of all matches being tied on games and being decided by the court 1 winner. But 2022 Nationals showed a bit of an uptick in those decided by the court 1 winner, but that is a pretty small sample size so may be due to that.
And for what it is worth, while 2023 is still young, so same percentages seem to be holding.
What do you think? Are these percentages of matches that come down to tie-breakers significant enough that you think it warrants going back to a 5-court format?
We should be having the best-of-5 format regardless. But, around 1% of all matches being decided by #1 dubbs is very low. I thought you figured at one point it was around 3%.
ReplyDeleteConsidering just one division playing at Nationals where all 17 sections have teams with every team playing the RR of 4 matches each, there's 38 matches total through the Final. So, basically every 3 divisions playing Nationals will result in 1 match being decided by the #1 dubbs court. That's not much. Sample size is obviously much smaller than throughout the regular season for the entire country, but I'd also expect the # of tied matches to be higher at Nationals, too. All the teams should be more equal than your local leagues and previous playoffs would be. But again, why have the possibilities of ties when it's unnecessary?
Using the 1D result as the final tiebreaker is essentially a coin flip, especially when two evenly matched teams play. The simplest solution is to play a second singles line (I'm still confused why we don't at 40+. There's no shortage of people willing to play singles.) If USTA insists on allowing a match to be tied, then we should call it a tie and use a competitive metric such as record vs. common opponents to determine which team advances.
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