Tennis News You Can Use
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.
Undoubtedly the USTA will face an onslaught of criticism for the fact that the transition to the new platform has been somewhat less than smooth. The majority of the hate will come from people who have never been responsible for project management and oversight for an IT project of any kind, much less one as large and impactful as Serve Tennis.
Rolling out large new IT systems is hard. Project management for IT and software development projects is fraught with peril. I have spend my entire career both directly and immediately adjacent to performing this type of work. I would be lying if I made the claim that every project I ever led was executed to perfection. Far from it.
The Polar Bear Adult Doubles tournament was a large tournament with 541 players on the competitors list. Many of these participants as well as the Tournament Director are members of the Facebook group of tournament players in Texas. There was a lot of frustration as well as calls for patience expressed in that forum.
From the outside looking in, I can only speculate about the current status of the Play Tennis platform as well as the obviously much needed recovery plan. If I might be so bold, I would think that a phased implementation plan is advisable. The “Big Bang” approach was a the core of the trepidation expressed by this site in the weeks leading up to the launch.
Surely these events will prompt some postmortems and critical evaluation of the contributing factors that have culminated in the current Play Tennis state of affairs. At the core, the USTA needs to come to terms that the organization has a less than stellar record with digital technology and IT project execution. Play Tennis is not a blip on the radar, but rather a continuation of an extended arc of technical mediocrity.
In the meantime, the Polar Bear Adult Doubles tournament and draws can be found over on TennisLink. That is the only platform that could support the needs of the tournament last weekend. Serve Tennis will work… eventually. However, based on the first full weekend of tournaments, the jury is still out.
