The NTRP Championships Rules Get Weird
The 2025 NTRP National Championship Fact Sheet outlines the draw and scoring format for the upcoming tournament. Last year, the USTA ditched the flawed short-setRead More
1 responseAn engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The 2025 NTRP National Championship Fact Sheet outlines the draw and scoring format for the upcoming tournament. Last year, the USTA ditched the flawed short-setRead More
1 responseIn past years, I have lamented a lack of information about how many slots each Section is allocated for the USTA’s NTRP National Championship andRead More
1 responseLast weekend, I submitted my entry into the Women’s 18+ 4.5 doubles division for the NTRP National Championships, which will be held next month inRead More
Conducting National Championships is woven into the very fiber of the USTA’s existence. When the organization was confronted with the problem of declining participation in tournaments and focused on increasing play at NTRP events, the most natural “solution” was creation of a National Championship. As soon as a tournament is designated as a “National Championship,” it is also almost a foregone conclusion that it will be Level 1 in the USTA framework. Unfortunately, that sequence of completely logical thought breaks the rankings pyramid and hurts the overall tournament ecosystem.
Last week, I wrote about the new doubles selection criteria that were recently implemented for the 2025 USTA NTRP National Championships. As a short summary,Read More
2 responsesLast weekend, I played a tournament on a frigid and windy day at a site where the courts are extremely closely spaced with no physicalRead More
3 responsesA player approached me at a tournament I played last weekend to ask if it was true that the USTA had modified the selection criteriaRead More
3 responsesOne of the USTA’s overarching philosophies for Adult League play is that as much autonomy as possible should be driven down to the grassroots level.Read More
My recent posts on the rules surrounding the common practice of “double dipping” in USTA League play generated an interesting comment. As I broke downRead More
2 responsesNew Year’s Day marks more than just the start of a new calendar and a celebration of fresh beginnings. It is also a special milestoneRead More