An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
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.
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.”