In 2018, the USTA pioneered a new NTRP National Championship tournament. There are actually separate championships for two age group levels. Tournaments are conducted in singles and doubles for people who are 50 and older. There are also tournaments for any adults with an NTRP rating who are 18 and over. As a reminder, I played in the inaugural 50+ event in 2018, in Naples, Florida.
The USTA made the decision to play the NTRP National Championships using the Fast4 format. This is what prompts me to write about that event in the midst of this series of posts on the “Score in a Set” section of the USTA Friend at Court. In fact, the use of the format at that tournament is arguably the only reason why I am even writing about Fast4 as a topic at all.
The Fast4 format is not included in either the ITF Rules of Tennis or in the USTA Friend at Court. What is included in those publications is a definition of a “Short Set” which has been in existence in the rules at least since 2011, which is significantly earlier that the “global launch” of the format in 2015. A short set is similar to Fast4, but the mechanization of the rules are different. It appear that the wording evolution for “Short Sets” highlighted in “Getting a Little Short with Short Set Formats” were perhaps ITF updates made to accommodate the Fast4 definition.
In “The ITF, USTA Overlord” essay, I wrote about how the ITF owns the rules of tennis and that the local sanctioning organizations are only authorized to provide clarifications or augmentations that are applicable within that sanctioning jurisdiction. Since the Fast4 format is not specified in either the ITF Rules of Tennis or the USTA Friend at Court, this means that the USTA has elected to conduct a National Championship Tournament using a format that is not sanctioned per its own regulations.
As mentioned in “Whodunnit: Fast4“, Tennis Australia has an elegant, full, and complete specification of the rules of the Fast4 format in the “Australian Rankings and Tournament Regulations” publication, which is the roughly equivalent to the USTA Friend at Court. There are two types of tournaments defined by Tennis Australia. These are Australian Money Tournaments (AMT) AND Junior Tournaments (JT).
How exactly the AMT and JT categories might map into the related USTA tournament offerings is an understanding that is not needed to underscore the next point. In Australia, there are four levels defined for each of these tournament formats: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Of these Bronze is the only level of play where Fast4 is an approved format, and it is listed as an alternate to the traditional 6 game sets in every instance when it appears.
In other words, the sanctioning body that has actually formalized the scoring format into its regulations has also specified that the format is only appropriate for the lowest defined level of competition, and only then as an alternative. In Australia, the format would certainly not be used for a National Championship.
When I first encountered Fast4 for the NTRP Championship, my engineer brain kicked into high gear to make sure that I understood the format as well as strategic nuances before traveling to the competition. I practiced playing the format with one of my regular training buddies who also played the event. I most certainly had trepidation about the new format, but believe that I approached the event with a somewhat open mind.
My criticisms and concerns emerged from experience playing and observing the format. As I discussed the format with Michael Hughes at the event and others in and around the USTA subsequent to that, the insinuation has been that there is a compelling reason that makes Fast4 desirable and that I just need to broaden my perspective. As we approach the third year of this event, I have still yet to be enlightened.
I have always been somewhat of a rules and regulations nerd, so it is very natural to me to try to get smarter on Fast4. My problem is that the more I learn about it, the more confused I become about why the USTA is promoting it at all, much less for an alleged National Championship. It simply defies logic.
- 4 Fast Arguments Against Fast 4, Bleeping Tennis, September 21, 2018 (This is a domain also owned by the author.)
- 2020 Australian Ranking Tournament Rules and Regulations, Tennis Australia, December 21, 2019.
- About NTRP National Championships, USTA, page viewed September 21, 2018 and February 20, 2020.
- United States Tennis Association (2020) Friend at Court. White Plains, NY
