The stories seem to be authored by the sections and some were more prolific than others. Here is a count by section.
Come on USTA, there are more than seven sections! Where are the stories from the other 10? Did they all choose not to participate?
The stories are a nice touch though, give them a read.
This weekend was only 40 & Over Mixed with the 6.0 and 9.0 levels being played in Orlando and the 7.0 and 8.0 levels in Surprise.
The 6.0 level had Texas, PNW, Southern, and Mid-Atlantic make the semis, the first three at 4-0 with Mid-Atlantic being the pick of a 4-way tie at 3-1. The simulation had three of these in its top-7, but PNW was the surprise. The semis has Texas and Southern winning with Texas taking the title.
At 7.0, SoCal, Southwest, MoValley, and Middle States made the semis, the first two at 3-0 and the next two in a 4-way tie at 3-1. This was unexpected as just SoCal was in the simulation's top-4. But the simulation was right in SoCal being the strongest of those that made it as they faced off against Southwest in the final and won it 3-0.
The 8.0 level saw New England, Florida, Mid-Atlantic, and Eastern advance, the first two at 4-0 and another 4-way tie at 3-1. These teams were all in the top-9 of the simulation and three expected to be in it at 3-1. Eastern and Florida won their semis with Florida taking the title.
Last, at 9.0, Florida, Texas, Middle States, and Mid-Atlantic made the semis, two at 4-0 and the other two in a 3-way tie at 3-1. Three of these teams were in my simulation's top-5. Florida and Texas won the semis and Florida took the title.
Congratulations to the champs!
So that's a wrap for Nationals. The next big "event" is year-end ratings should be published right around two weeks from now on/around December 1st. Stay tuned for more on that!
The levels are split across two locations, the 7.0 and 8.0 being played in Surprize, AZ (the 7th straight weekend of hosting Nationals!) while the 6.0 and 9.0 will be in Orlando (only the 4th straight weekend).
For those saying "what about 65 & Over and Tri-Level, don't they count?", you would be correct they have not been played yet, but technically those are "Invitationals" and not normal Nationals.
The Tri-Level event is scheduled for March 4-6 in Rancho Mirage, CA making for a fun trip to the California desert during the Indian Wells event, while the 65 & Over event will be held over three weekends in late January and early February in Surprise, AZ.
Good luck to all those playing this weekend!
One might wonder, what is this based on? Why would the USTA bump up a lot more players in one section than another?
The answer is the year-end calculations the USTA does try to level the playing field across all of the sections, so that a 3.5 in Southern California is relatively the same as a 3.5 in New England, or a 4.0 in Southern is relatively the same as a 4.0 in Northern.
A key factor in the year-end calculations is how each section does at Nationals. If one section does really well at Nationals, that is probably an indication that their players are stronger than players in other sections and to level things, more bump ups may be in order. In the past Southern, PNW, Caribbean, and Texas have all been sections to get abnormally high bump up rates, and this generally correlates with how the section did at Nationals.
So who is in line to get the big bump up rates in a month when year-end ratings come out?
Intermountain appears to be a key candidate. Here is how they did at 18 & Over Nationals:
In a full 7 out of 11 events Intermountain made at least the semis, made the final 4 times, and won twice.
In 40 & Over, it wasn't as clearly dominant, but in the 8 events there were 2 that made the semis and two others finished 5th.
Who knows what will happen with the USTA dealing with a 2-year rating period, but my guess is Intermountain may get and justify a higher than normal number of bump ups, certainly at several levels.
What do you think?
As a reminder, my section (PNW) went to this format when the 40 & Over league switched to the 4-court format which brought 2-2 ties into play, as points per position and standings based on accumulated points allows weighting courts so a 2-2 tie on the court isn't a 2-2 tie in points, and it also removes the team win from being a factor in the standings. This was necessary as at the time the 4-court format was introduced, the National regulations did not say what would happen if there were a 2-2 tie that was tied on all the published tie-breakers. And it was occurring before National clarified the rules.
While some sections have used, and will continue to use, points per position for leagues regardless of the number of course, apparently those in my area responded to a survey saying they were not in favor of it and PNW listened and is changing back. I personally didn't mind points per position, I just considered it "different", but I expect folks will be more comfortable with the traditional way of doing standings.
But that begs the question of how 2-2 ties will now work?
The answer is it will work using the tie-breaker that National put in place after 2020 40 & Over leagues started when they discovered they hadn't accounted for everything, and that is that if the teams are still tied after the sets lost and games lost tie-breakers are applied, the winner of the team match will be the team that won court 1 doubles.
In the message received today, it was noted that the court 1 doubles winner would be the last tie-breaker, and also made the statement that it was rare for a match to get to the point of the court 1 winner deciding the team match winner. Well, if you have read my blog for long, you know something like that causes me to go look to see if the statement in fact is true.
I have researched this a bit before, in fact I looked at how often ties happened at 40 & Over Nationals a few weeks ago, but that was before all of 40 & Over was done, so taking a look again, there were 292 team matches played, 84 of them (29%) were 2-2 ties, 31 of these (11%) were also tied on sets, and finally 3 were tied on games as well and as a result were decided by the team that won court 1 doubles.
Now, three is not a lot, but that is out of 292 matches and three represents just over 1% of all matches. One percent probably does qualify as "rare", but clearly it does happen so one should not construe the claim of rare to mean it will probably never happen.
And before you say it is so "rare" that it would never happen in a meaningful match, one of the three occurrences was in the semi-final match for the 4.5 men, and another was in a match that decided who advanced to the semis for the 3.5 women. Matches don't get much more important than these.
But what about across all 40 & Over play? For 2021, there were 27,751 team matches played for 40 & Over using the 1 singles 3 doubles format, of these 7,204 (26%) ended in 2-2 ties, 2,927 (11%) were tied on sets, and 248 (1%) were tied on games. The percentages are remarkably close to those at Nationals.
So, with this rule in place, it appears one can expect 1% of matches to be decided by the court 1 winner.
I know many people, myself included, don't like the 4-court format, but given it is still here, do you prefer court 1 doubles deciding ties? Did you like points per position to just make 2-2 ties inconsequential? Or prefer another way to handle it?
In the past, Fed Cup was played over three weekends throughout the year with four pairs of teams facing off one weekend early in the year with one of the countries being the host, the the winners advance to the semis two pairs play with one country being the host, and the winners then play the final near the end of the year with one of the countries being the host. The format for each tie was two singles matches on day 1, then reverse singles on day 2 followed by a double match to potentially determine the winner if the singles matches split 2-2.
In its new form, there are 12 countries that compete, and the whole competition is played over the course of one week all in one location. Instead of having an elimination bracket, the 12 teams are split into four groups of three countries each where each country plays two round-robin ties against the other two teams in their group. Each tie is two singles and one doubles match. The winners of each group advance to the semis where an elimination draw is then played.
For those that follow USTA League, this format probably sounds familiar, as Nationals uses round-robin play to determine four teams to advance to the semis to play an elimination draw. One of the issues I've identified in the past is how the USTA determines the standings if there are ties on wins/losses, so naturally I wanted to see how the ITF did this for a group based format to see if similar issues existed.
With round-robin formats, it is possible, and often happens, for teams to tie on win/loss record. When this happens, the event determines how to break the tie using other finer-grained criteria than wins and losses. In the case of the USTA, they use:
What the ITF uses is:
The criteria look similar, but there are some key differences.
First, the ITF places head-to-head ahead of the other criteria. One can debate which approach is the best, but there are some that think the USTA should do the same.
Second, individual match/court record and percent of matches won is effectively the same, so the next difference is sets lost vs percent of sets won. These may sound similar but are in fact different, and the ITF gets this right while using sets lost is one of the flaws in the USTA's tie-breakers. Using just sets lost ignore actually winning sets, while percent of sets won includes the won and lost sets and is more comprehensive and equitable.
Third, if teams do happen to still be tied, the USTA uses games lost while the ITF again gets it right and uses percent of games won. Using just games lost is a huge flaw in the USTA's approach as this criteria rewards losing a set 6-0 (six games lost) over losing a set 7-6 (seven games lost) which is clearly inequitable, but the USTA has stuck with their criteria despite feedback and a regulation change proposal to fix it.
Before you say, it isn't a big deal, the tie-breakers never go this far or the scenario is unlikely, this flawed tie-breaker has reared its ugly head numerous times including a few weeks ago at 2021 Nationals. Even if it had never happened, it is silly to have a bad rule and pass it off as unlikely, but it has happened, so USTA, pay attention to the ITF and get this one right!
This weekend finishes up the 18 & Over Mixed with the 7.0 and 9.0 levels playing in Surprise, AZ.
Next weekend 40 & Over starts and finishes with the 7.0 and 8.0 levels in Surprise, and the 6.0 and 9.0 levels in Orlando.
Good luck everyone!
