Tennis News You Can Use
I don’t want to pile on. Issues with the deployment of the USTA’s new digital application development platform continue to roll in. “Harsh Realities Revealed in the USTA Digital Platform Update” which went live on March 8, detailed some to the issues including the fact that players entering doubles events in USTA tournaments under the new platform have no way to indicate who their partner will be. Issues with the new system continue to roll in.
For example, the new platform crashes when a tournament has multiple sites and there are a lot of total players entered. The USTA has also been unable to provide event organizers accurate rankings lists on which to base seeding. In addition to creating additional load on the organizers of tournaments, it creates a negative player experience. I am sure that no one ever anticipated that the day would come when we all missed TennisLink, but let’s consider the following visual gem:
That’s right kids, someone at the USTA entered the wrong age level when creating the 50 & over NTRP Nationals and no one can figure out how to correct it in the system. Tournament administration was so delayed in advance of a historically well run Adult Major Zone tournament in Texas last weekend that one player expressed the following sentiment on the Facebook group of active tournament players in Texas. “Does anybody wanna guess when or where they might be playing this weekend in Houston? Maybe we can do it like a flex league and just schedule the matches ourselves.”
Ever since the fiasco of the new USTA digital platform started to unfold, I have been engaging in an activity known as “open source data collection” in the vernacular of my day job. Specifically, I have been keeping a close eye on both the USTA executive staff public web page as well as the LinkedIn Profiles of some of the likely culprits in this saga. This week there was one big change reflected on both of those sources.
The USTA Executive directory staff for the Director of Digital Application Development has been updated to be “TBD.” In addition, the LinkedIn profile of the person who was previously in that position has also been updated to reflect that she is no longer with the USTA.
This story has a punch line. The former Director of Digital Application Development for the USTA has a new title. She has taken a new position as the “VP, Data and Engineering at Major League Soccer.”
Good luck, Major League Soccer. Data and Engineering was precisely the problem at the USTA.
