Week 4 team/player shenanigans from USTA League Nationals

Getting to Nationals is hard, particularly if you follow the rules.  To get there you need players at the very top of your level, and frankly a number of them that are on their way to a bump up, and even then you may run into teams that have formed their teams a little more successfully.

One would like to think there is a limit to what you'd see at Nationals, but competition makes people do interesting things and sometimes things are taken what most would consider to be too far.  I like to write about some of the scenarios I see when doing my analysis and simulations of Nationals, and folks will share with me some interesting cases too that I look into and sometimes write about.

With that said, here is a sample of a few from this weekend.  I hinted at a few in this week's simulations, but more detail is shared here.

This is by no means a comprehensive accounting of every suspect player or team, nor is it intended to accuse all of them of cheating in some way.  It is merely observations of what is at a minimum interesting situations that have occured.

First up is a team with a lot of self-rates.  Players that self-rate are not necessarily wrong or bad, but it is something that we've seen abused from time to time.  Many self-rated players remain the same level at year-end and some are even bumped down, but those that get bumped up, especially if they fill a team at Nationals, make you go hmmm.

The 18 & Over 4.0 women's team from Texas has small roster of just 10, and 9 of those players are self-rated!  Again, that isn't necessarily bad, but the fact they won Sectionals and as I write this won their first match at Nationals 4-1, one might think they had at least a few players that should have been 4.5s from the start.

The Southern team in the 18 & Over 4.0 men's event has a player who was a 4.5 in the past then didn't play, and then it appears self-rated as a 4.5 but got an appeal down to 4.0 granted.  What has he done?  He went 12-1 through Sectionals, the one loss a huge outlier to say the least, and he probably barely avoided a DQ.  As I write this, he is 1-0 at Nationals probably accruing another strike (but it doesn't matter at Nationals).  Was this perhaps an inappropriate appeal down granted?

The 18 & Over 4.0 men's team from Texas has a player that isn't eligible because they were DQ'd and promoted to 4.5 mid-year, but they were a 2022 year-end 4.0C, so how did that happen?  It appears the player was a 5.0C in the past, then didn't play so had to self-rate.  Instead of self-rating under their existing account, they created a new one and self-rated as a 4.0!  They played in 2022 going 3-0 to start, perhaps on their way to a 4.5 year-end rating, then suddenly couldn't win going 0-4 to close the year, all lopsided scores, leading to the 4.0C.  Apparently someone figured this out at 40 & Over Sectionals and the USTA DQ'd him to 4.5 and merged the accounts.

Yes, Southern and Texas have the highest Shenanigans Scores for the 4.0 men's event.

How might some of these shenanigans, whether deliberate or innocent, be addressed?  See my lengthy write-up of suggestions on how to address grossly out of level teams at Nationals.  Several of the items discussed there likely would have addressed the scenarios above.

Now, one can always argue that someone has to be the best at a level, and people will complain about whoever that happens to be, and that if you eliminate them, it then just leaves someone else for everyone to complain about.  That may be true, and is the shortcoming of arbitrary level based play, but I also think some actions that are taken to try to be the best at a level do go too far and should be cracked down on.

What interesting scenarios have you seen at this year's Nationals?