An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The USTA sent an email last week with a link to a survey directed to all League Players. It was also indicated that the email was sent because the recipient is “a valued member of the USTA.” It makes me wonder if there is a list somewhere of USTA members who are not valued.
A couple of months ago there was a spirited thread on the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association (NSMTA) discussion board regarding consolation brackets at National Cat/Level 1 tennis tournaments. Some of the viewpoints and experiences expressed in that forum illuminated the feedback that most likely will influence back draw implementation once competitive play results at that level.
I am guessing that Nick Taylor is an unfamiliar name to the majority of tennis fans. In fact, I only heard about him when casting about for the appropriate tennis news story to share as this week’s “News You Can Use” feature. Nick Taylor is a former #1 world ranked player in both singles and doubles. Still not ringing a bell? Taylor competes in the Quad Wheelchair division.
I have to confess a distinct lack of enthusiasm for today’s topic. This past weekend marked the first tournaments of the year to be executed under the new USTA Play Tennis framework. The largest of the events held was the Level 5 Open 2021 CATA Polar Bear Adult Doubles. That tournament was conducted in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, that tournament was ultimately run under the old TennisLink system.
Effective January 1, 2021, the Fair Oaks Tennis Center in Dallas is permanently closed. To the best of my knowledge, the only place where the closure notification has been published is on the Facebook page for the facility. The announcement of the impending shut down was first shared on December 6.
The NSMTA site has an undated post that has been up for at least a month that provides a summary of the problems that the USTA Adult Competition Committee (ACC) has been trying to solve for National Senior Tennis. I find this summary to be insightful as to the challenges faced by the ACC. Additionally, it illuminates the perception of the problems from the NSMTA perspective.
From the earliest posts about the tennis related impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have bemoaned the lack of rigorous scientific evaluation of potential transmission of the SARS-CoV family of diseases via tennis balls. A recently published study has changed that situation. At first glance, the news is fairly promising which apparently prompted the USTA to issue a statement on the topic.
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.