2020 USTA League 40 & Over Format Change Impacts and Choices

For the 2020 USTA League season, the National format for the 40 & Over division has changed to a 4-court format with one singles and three doubles matches.  This page will be added to to document how each section and/or district is adapting to the format.

The primary options are to use traditional team record for standings, or use points-per-position (PPP) instead.  The challenge with the former is that a 4-court format has the possibility of 2-2 ties and the documented tie-breakers not being sufficient.  This has led some sections to adopt PPP instead.

What follows are all the sections and what their format will be for determining standings in the regular season.  Where the approach is different for the districts within a section, that is also called out.  Where PPP is used, I list the points allocation as an n-digit number, n the number of courts, and list singles first.

Rules and regulations like this are sometimes not documented well, so please contact me or leave a comment if you have information on what is being done in your area and we'll crowd source filling in the blanks.

Eastern

Eastern has used PPP before in some districts with different points allocations.  Here is different districts are handling it:

• Northern District - 4432 points allocation.
• Metro-Manhattan - 5643 points allocation for 4.0 and below and 1111 for 4.5+.

Northern California

NorCal is using PPP with a 1211 points allocation.

Pacific Northwest

PNW is using PPP with a 1211 points allocation.

Southern

Lots of districts in Southern, here is what I've heard by district:

• South Carolina - 4-courts, allowing for ties and 1/2 points in standings if still tied after the standard sets and games tie-breakers.  If teams tied in standings at end of season, tie broken on most match wins, head-to-head, sets lost, and games lost.

Southern California

SoCal is playing 4-courts and keeping team wins for standings allowing for 2-2 ties and whatever tie-breakers TennisLink has.  Except, there are some exceptions:

• Current tie-breakers eventually give the win to the visiting team should they be tied on games lost.
• TennisLink may change to allow a league to specify that the team that wins a specific court wins in the event of a tie, and SoCal would use court 1 doubles.
• Orange County 4.5+ will continue to play 5 courts, 2S/3D.
• Some areas may use 1S/2D.
• Sectionals will be 1S/3D.

Texas

It appears different areas are handling the change differently:

• Austin is playing 4-courts and keeping team wins for standings.
• San Antonio is playing 5-courts for all flights, but switching to 1S/4D for all flights other than 4.5+ which is remaining 2S/3D in order to not eliminate playing opportunities for 4.5 singles players.

Updated 19-Jan-2020