You _can_ go to Nationals without playing a match! Simulation and prediction for 55 & Over 7.0 Mixed

There is a USTA League Nationals event going on this weekend, the 55 & Over Mixed Invitational.  Perusing through the teams I noticed that the team from Northern got there without playing a match!

It appears the 7.0 team had no local league, and there was a Sectional invitational set up to determine the team to advance and they were the only team, so they got the invite to Nationals.

A team playing no matches makes it hard to have data to do my simulation from, but I did it anyway and the simulation predicts a pretty tight event.

No teams were expected to go undefeated, with just three teams projected to have a most likely record of 3-1, those being NorCal, Southern, and Caribbean.

That leaves a whopping 9 teams with a projected 2-2 record vying for the last semi-final spot.  The most likely to advance were Hawaii, Middle States, Florida, Texas, MO Valley, and Southwest.

After the first day, Southern is now projected to go 4-0.  They had a 27% chance before play started and now it is 55%.  But no others join them, instead there are six forecast to be 3-1.  Those being NorCal, Florida, Caribbean, Midwest, Eastern, and Southwest.

With just three courts played, there is a good chance there is a tie on courts for the last spot and then we get the dreaded tie-breakers.

We'll see what happens!