An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The USTA Friend at Court contains a table of guidelines for the maximum number of daily matches for a player within a division in a USTA tennis tournament. Per the tennis triple constraint model that was the subject of yesterday’s post, the various scoring methods in that table are the qualitative aspects of match play that constrains the calendar time and schedule for the tournament.
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A popular joke about project management goes like this: “All projects can be done well, fast, and cheap. Pick two.” That joke is based on the triple constraint theory of project management. It is elegantly conceptualized as a triangle that represents the trade-offs between scope, cost, and time. The idea is that changes to any of those vertices forces adjustment in one or both of the other two. I recently had the revelation that I had been unconsciously using the triple constraint model as I have been ruminating on tournament scheduling, draw formats, and ranking systems.
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I have been an under the radar fan of Alize Cornet for a very long time. Her passion for tennis competition is always discernible by the expression on her face. Cornet is also currently on an amazing streak of longevity that seems to have escaped widespread attention by most of the tennis world. When Cornet steps onto the court at Roland Garros at the French Open next week, it will mark her 61st consecutive appearance at a Grand Slam. To underscore the achievement, she has appeared in every single Grand Slam draw for over 15 years.
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A clip of Denis Shapovalov yelling at the Italian Open crowd to “Shut the f*** up!” went viral last week. The incident occurred in his first round match against Lorenzo Sonego following a call that didn’t go his way after the umpire inspected a ball mark. The episode revealed that Shapovalov didn’t understand one of the fundamental rules of tennis.
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Over the past couple of weeks the USTA has sent an inordinate number of email messages to its membership heralding the imminent arrival of the World Tennis Number. For anyone who has ever bothered to register with the ITF, the World Tennis Number is already here. It appears on the ITF player profile page. In order for that to work, the ITF has to be able to receive information from all its member organizations in some standardized format. That is where the Tennis Open Data Standard (TODS) comes in.
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The ATP Players association isn’t happy about the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian players from Wimbledon and is threatening punitive action. Did you know that there is a full sized tennis court in Grand Central Station? Neither did I…
It is no secret that Feed in Consolation through the Quarterfinals (FICQ) is my favorite draw format. It is commonly used for Junior Sectional championship tournaments as well as Level 1 tournaments for both Junior and Adult competition. This “double elimination” format is the gold standard for tournament competition when the stakes are high.
Voluntary consolation is a variation of the First Match Loser’s Consolation (FMLC) draw. In that format players that lose their first match have the option of signing up to participate in a back draw. Doing so is not required. When the USTA unveiled the 7 tier unified national tournament system, the voluntary consolation draw was explicitly included as an option at every tier of competition. Today’s post outlines the case for why the format arguably shouldn’t be used.
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The “mullet” hairstyle is a combination of short and long hair colloquially described as “business in the front, party in the back.” With that definition, the First Match Loser’s Consolation (FMLC) draw is the “mullet” of tournament formats. Ranking points are awarded on a “order of finish” basis in the front draw but switches around to a “points per round” system in the back draw. I don’t have the official stats from the USTA, but I would be stunned if FMLC wasn’t the most commonly used format for USTA sanctioned tournaments by a mile. Unfortunately, that draw format directly contributes to player disengagement from tournament play.
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In 2016, Novak Djokovic entered the clay court season with the three previous major championships under his belt. However, he had never hoisted the trophy at Roland Garros. French tennis journalist Carole Bouchard was there to chronicle his quest to achieve the “career slam.” At that time, Djokovic was on the outside looking in as the tennis world enthusiastically debated whether Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal would emerge as the greatest player of all time. Winning the French Open changed the narrative and inserted Djokovic into the conversation.