Last month, I played in the Level 1 National Senior Women’s Clay Court Championships in Houston. This year, the tournament used a slightly different draw format from what has been used in the past. This is a good opportunity to discuss how defaults are handled in tournament tennis and the impacts on tournament play. Additionally, this is another opportunity for me to jump up on the soapbox about the chronic problem of defaults in the back draw.
Perusing the “USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking, & Sanctioning Regulations” reveals a distinct lack of drama regarding defaults in the tournament setting. Essentially, if a player defaults, a match, the other player advances. For the most part, the Regulations specify the ranking point implications and how to determine the order of finish when a default occurs in a round-robin.
Players can be defaulted by an official for bad behavior during a match, but that doesn’t happen all that often in Adult tournament tennis. Additionally, suspension points can be levied if a player excessively enters tournaments and defaults via a no-show. The rules are very simple compared to the USTA League Regulations for defaults that we have been exploring this weekend.
The USTA Level 1 Tournaments are the National Championships of the United States. For Adults, these are conducted at Age-Group Levels, and there is a tournament competed on four surfaces: hard courts, clay courts, grass courts, and indoors. This is where Gold, Silver, and Bronze Balls are awarded. I previously wrote about this in “Gold Balls and Specialized Awards: USTA Level 1 National Championships.” I also highly recommend the documentary reviewed in “Gold Balls: The World of Ultra Senior Tennis.”
According to a USTA Tournament Informational Page, Level 1 tournaments can use a variety of draw formats. These are Round Robin, Compass Draw, Team Format, Curtis Consolation, Feed In Championships, and Voluntary Consolation. There are actually two types of Feed In Championships (FIC) draw types that can be used.
This year, the Houston Clays used the “Feed In Consolation through the Round of 16” (FIC-R16) draw format with a playoff for players who lose in the quarterfinals. That means that players who drop into the back draw through the Round of 16 are competing to finish as high as 9th in the tournament. In years past, the tournament used a “Feed In Consolation through the Quarterfinals” (FICQ) format. In that draw type, the winner of the back draw finishes 5th in the tournament.
I strongly prefer FICQ to FIC-R16 for that very reason. My theory is that the opportunity to win significant ranking points can incentivize players to stick around and play. Additionally, the deeper a tournament goes using FIC, the better the quality of the competition that drops down into the back draw. That fundamentally supports more competitive matches and better tennis. My official opinion is that Level 1 tournaments should be required to use FICQ unless numbers are so low that a round-robin is necessary or practical.
Unfortunately, defaults and withdrawals are chronic in the back draw, even at Level 1 tournaments. While it can be argued that part of the reason it occurs is because players are unaware of how many ranking points are at stake, it is primarily a cultural issue. I wish we could convince players that back draw defaults for any other reason than serious emergency or injury is unsportsmanlike and rude.
I also think that the USTA should consider excessive back draw withdrawals as a negative criteria for selection to International cup teams. When the going gets tough, do we really want people representing our country who routinely opt out of competition?
In the Women’s 55s division at the Houston Clays, a player lost her first round match and then advanced through the back draw by playing only one partial match that her opponent retired at 4-2. Otherwise, she didn’t play a match until the 9th place consolation final. Fortunately, the player is local to the Houston area. Presumably this was more of an inconvenience than a costly way to eventually play one additional match.
That is also something that should never happen at a Level 1 tournament. Some may be concerned that this player was awarded a considerable amount of rankings points for her default waltz through the back draw. However, the real travesty is all the tennis that should have been played, but was not. In essence, this player was denied the opportunity that she entered the tournament for in the first place, to simply compete.
The USTA answer to the problem of excessive defaults in the back draw is “voluntary” consolation. I think that actually exacerbates the situation by removing any real incentives for players to stick around and compete. I previously went deep on that topic in “An Ode to the Back Draw.” Voluntary consolation is a great example of a reasonable solution to the wrong problem.
This weekend was all about how I really don’t like defaults in tennis. Even worse are rules and Regulations that exacerbate the issue. Whether a default occurs in USTA League or tournaments, every scheduled match that isn’t played is like a broken promise. That is exactly the opposite of my “More tennis is always the answer” mantra.
We need to change the culture of USTA tournament tennis. Defaults are something that should only happen due to extreme emergency or injury. Maximizing the number of matches are played is of paramount importance.
- Level 1: National Senior Women’s Clay Court Championships, USTA Tournament Page, last viewed March 16, 2024.
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking, & Sanctioning Regulations, USTA Regulation, as amended December 14, 2023.
- 2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranked Events, USTA Informational Page, last viewed March 16, 2024.
I have been a Referee at Senior Mens Tennis Tournaments for over 15 years and the fairly recent USTA requirement that players in consolation draws cannot be moved has resulted in even more no shows and defaults than the previous system I used to operate of sign-up consolation events, where players were moved to optimise the event for the number of players entering.
For instance we had a senior Mens even (50-90) this past year when an entrant had a bye in the first round and a walkover in the second round. He lost in the main draw third round and should have been able to go into the consolation event for First Match Losers… but the USTA software would not put him into the draw. The USTA refused to help and the player went away disgruntled…
There were three age divisions where in one half of the consolation, players went to the final without playing any matches and in the other half players played at least three matches. That is just not fair. This was a tournament with 210 entrants.
Most senior players travelling to a tournament want play on consecutive days and do not want to incur additional accommodation cost by missing one or two days with no play. This is a real consideration in Florida where accommodation rates through ‘season’ are high.
The most successful way of operating consolation events in my experience, judged by the low number of no shows was to ask players to sign up to enter a consolation event after they had played and lost. They could then be paired with the player on the line above on the sign-up sheet and the draw was altered by moving players to create a balanced draw. Players would know before they left the site that they had an opponent and, most often, what time and where they were playing. The consolation players therefore had a commitment to playing- they had signed up, and the there were very few no-shows.
There is nothing worse for a player in a tournament to prepare for a match, maybe travel a couple of hours only for their opponent to not show up with no notification to anyone or spend money on an extra day at a hotel and have a layer not show.
I am afraid that asking players to be more considerate or committed does not work.