An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
In a significant Fiend at Court departure, today I am writing about a movie. I would characterize it as “a cute little show.” Until fairly recently, I would have lamented that there are no truly great movies about tennis. In 2017, Battle of the Sexes and Borg vs McEnroe changed that. Even with those titles anchoring the top two spots, I would be hard pressed to find ten movies to even construct a “Top Ten Tennis Movies” list.
The USTA sent an email out to a subset of adult members this week announcing the publication of Adult and Senior “Shadow Rankings” for 2020. These rankings lists are being used to give players a feel for how the new system will work. At the same time the USTA is using these rankings to evaluate whether there should be any changes to the rankings tables across the 7 Levels tournament framework.
Earlier this week, a player posted an image of a flyer that was included in the tournament packets at the Texas Master’s Championships. That one sheet of paper illuminates what is likely to be imminently forthcoming once the full tournament calendar for the Texas Section is announced. The flyer reveals the apparent plan for continuation of NTRP Mixed Doubles in Texas. It also provides an early look at how the existing tournament structure will be slotted into the USTA consolidated framework in 2021.
Throughout my musing on the new USTA tournament structure coming in 2021, people keep whispering to me that the changes are going to be really good for driving increased participation in Senior tennis. I have been struggling to understand the logic behind that expectation. Until yesterday. When I started bouncing the new 7 tier National points schedule across various playing scenarios, I had an epiphany. There is a chance the new system will be fabulous for Senior tennis.
Yesterday my post included a map of all the currently confirmed USTA National Level Adult tournaments for 2021. Under the consolidated Adult Tournament Framework rolling out in January these tournaments are designated at Levels 1, 2, and 3. Today I am zooming in on the tournaments specifically in Texas. For anyone who is new here, Texas is my home section.
To stick a pin in this moment in time, the general population of the United States has spent the last 3 days obsessively staring at maps because the presidential race from the general election last Tuesday has yet to be decided. It may seem like an inopportune time to throw another map into the mix, but this site is nothing if not inopportune.
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When the calendar rolls over to November each year and the USTA Texas Master’s championship has concluded, I start to scan my mail box for the Texas Tennis Tournament Guide for the coming season. Each year the Texas Section Office mails out a catalog that contains a list of the tournaments scheduled for the coming year.
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There are three fundamental ways that rankings points can motivate play. 1) Rankings points are used as selection criteria for events with limited capacity for players. 2) Seeding in tournaments is almost always done off the rankings lists. 3) Some players just enjoy seeing their name in print on the rankings list.
Rankings points matter for more than just the position where a tennis player’s name appears in a list. Sometimes rankings points translate to selection to play in nationally and internationally significant events. That incentive is most pronounced in the upper echelons, but it has also been replicated at the sectional level for NTRP levels in the USTA Texas Section.
This is the second of a two part series on the draw formats that are available to USTA tennis tournament organizers under the new consolidated framework for 2021. Yesterday I introduced the table and described the Round Robin and Round Robin with Playoff formats. Today I am describing the remaining options that are available to tournament organizers.