An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
It was a safe bet that there would be growing pains as the USTA transitioned tennis tournament registration to the new digital platform. Registration is now open for tournaments scheduled in early January. It is apparent that players are struggling to complete their entries. Progress is sometimes painful.
There are exactly 25 days until the new USTA tournament structure for 2021 is officially enacted. It is almost time to take a deep breath and collectively say “Let’s do this.” There seems to be a perceptible uptick in the rate of new information trickling out for what USTA sanctioned tennis tournaments will look like in 2021.
Earlier this week, USTA Texas published a very helpful video containing information on the new USTA Tournament Structure in 2021. The questions covered in this session focused on NTRP events. As far as organizational communication on this topic, this video is the best I have seen to date in terms of concisely and clearly communicating the impacts of the change.
Last Thursday the USTA sent out an email addressed to all league captains announcing enhancements that should help league captains find and recruit prospective new players. It is a genuinely useful enhancement to the system that is going to help more teams form. At the same time, it illuminates how some local league rules in my area make it unlikely that many captains will actually have the luxury to use all aspects of the tool.
In “A First Glance at the USTA Adult National Tournament Calendar” which ran a couple of weeks ago, I commented that I had submitted a question to the AdultTournaments@usta.com email address. I also indicated that I would be surprised if my query elicited a response. Well… I was surprised. A reply was received.
Last Wednesday the USTA sent out an email to Adult tournament participants entitled “Upcoming Shadow Rankings: What You Need to Know.” That email contained what is believed to be an error in the first sentence, indicating that the communication was to inform the recipient about “2020 USTA Junior Tournaments Shadow Rankings.” The first paragraph also included verbiage about “players and parents.”
The draft of the updated USTA League Regulations for 2021 was published back in July. It has been on my radar as a future topics for the Fiend at Court “Tennis News You Can Use” focus which runs every Monday. It just kept sliding down in favor of other items that seemed more urgent or interesting to me at the time.
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The TIA Forum revealed how some parts of the tennis industry regard consumer segmentation. Tennis players are divided into two groups, core and —wait for it — non-core. The dividing line between these two demographics is at the 10 playing occasions per year. In other words, anyone who plays at least 10 times a year is a core player.
Last week the USTA sent not one — but two — emails to its adult members on the new adult 2021 tournament structure. One subject line posed the question on whether the members are “Up to Date” on the coming changes. The other was titled along the lines of “The Top Things to Know.” This may be the start of a new informational blitz in preparation for the rollout 2021. It is also an opportunity to revisit my previous coverage of this topic in light of the new information that has emerged in those two communications.
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Television viewership for the recently concluded US Open tennis tournament was down sharply when compared to 2019. A lot of the decline in viewership can be chalked up to the COVID-19 sports bubbles that created a glut of major sporting events taking place at the same time. The overall average tournament viewership was down 45% compared to 2019.