Fiend At Court Unplugged
Yesterday I wrote about disparities in how each USTA Sectional awards sanctions Level 5 tennis tournaments under the new framework unveiled by the USTA in 2021. Some sections have a lot of Level 5 tournaments and the differences cannot be chalked up to higher levels of participation. In fact, Texas has one of the highest tournament participation levels yet relatively few Level 5 tournaments.
The USTA Adult and Family Tournament Sanctioning Regulations allows for Level 5 tournaments to be sanctioned at the Sectional Level, but has some provisions for delegating sanctioning to those tournaments down to the District Level.
Section and District Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments.
Annually, each Sectional Association shall be authorized to sanction Section Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments. Sectional Associations with Districts may delegate the responsibility for holding some or all of these Section Level 5 Tournaments to the District Associations. When District Associations sanction Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments, they will be called District Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments.
USTA Adult and Family Tournament Sanctioning Regulations VII.B
I have no idea how many Level 5 tournaments have been sanctioned at the District level because the USTA Digital Interface does not allow direct queries for words only within the title of the tournament. I did find some District Level 5 tournaments that appear to be qualifiers for Sectional Events.
The USTA imposes strict limitations on the number of “Closed” tournaments that can be sanctioned at Level 5.
Section and District Level 5 Adult and Family Tournament will be subject to the following limitations:
Sectional Associations with District Associations may sanction up to 2 Closed District Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments in each division that are limited to residents of the District Association;
Sectional Associations without District Associations may sanction up to two Closed Section Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments in each division that are limited to residents of the Sectional Association;
USTA Adult and Family Tournament Sanctioning Regulations VII.B
Based on my adult tournament experience in Texas, I personally find the concept of a closed Level 5 tournament to be patently absurd. Additionally, the idea that a Level 5 tournament could be sanctioned with the restriction that only local district players could compete is ridiculous.
Framing this out in terms that Texas players would understand, it is like the Fort Worth Tennis Association was suddenly resurrected and awarded itself a Level 5 sanction that only players from Tarrant County could play. I don’t think Texas has (or would) delegate sanctions to the District level. However, if they ever did, my money would be on Fort Worth at the behest of the Greater Fort Worth Tennis Coalition to be the first District Association to invoke that degree of anti-competitive protectionism.
Beyond those “Closed” level 5 sanctions at the Sectional and District Level, the The USTA Adult and Family Tournament Sanctioning Regulations provides only recommendations on the number of “Open” Level 5 sanctions that can be issued.
Section and District Level 5 Adult and Family Tournament will be subject to the following limitations:
All other Section and District Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments will be open to residents of any Sectional or District Association;except that it is recommended that the total number of Section and District Level 5 Adult and Family Tournaments sanctioned in each division be less than the number of Section and District Level 6 Adult and Family Tournaments sanctioned in each division.
USTA Adult and Family Tournament Sanctioning Regulations VII.B
The salient question is whether the USTA Sections are following that recommendation. Here is the table we examined yesterday augmented with the number of Level 6 tournaments within each section.
| Section | Level 5 Open Tournaments | Level 6 Tournaments |
| Caribbean | 0 | 0 |
| Eastern | 23 | 87 |
| Florida | 37 | 59 |
| Hawaii | 0 | 0 |
| Intermountain | 27 | 32 |
| Mid Atlantic | 4 | 9 |
| Middle States | 41 | 1 |
| Midwest | 3 | 41 |
| Missouri Valley | 27 | 4 |
| New England | 14 | 28 |
| Northern | 0 | 19 |
| Northern California | 2 | 14 |
| Pacific Northwest | 8 | 7 |
| Southern | 33 | 111 |
| Southern California | 25 | 36 |
| Southwest | 10 | 17 |
| Texas | 16 | 66 |
It is clear that some Sections, such as Missouri Valley and Middle States, are ignoring the recommendation. I would love to hear the story about why Northern didn’t have any Level 5 tournaments at all. In any case, the geographic disparity in how sanctions are distributed across the unified structure that is supposed to provide players with a more consistent experience are starkly apparent.
Next weekend I plan to share my own observations of how too many Level 5 tournaments hurts the tennis ecosystem, incentivizes players to do wrong things, and cripples any efforts of the USTA to support geographic diversity.
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking & Sanctioning Regulations, Adopted May 14, 2020 and Amended December 2020.
