In April of 2023, the post “Escalating the Tiebreak Issue” described how I intentionally (and obnoxiously) escalated a dispute over the short-set tie-break game used at the USTA NTRP National Championships. In my defense, during the sixth year of using a tie-break game plagued with competitive inequity issues, my patience for the format was completely exhausted.
That last-ditch effort to illustrate the issues was apparently successful, as the USTA finally announced a decision to update the tie-break format for 2024. I took a victory lap over that decision in “NTRP Nationals Ch-ch-ch-changes!” Eventually, it was confirmed that the Coman tie-break game would be used in all divisions at the event going forward. Huzzah!
Fast-forward to April of this year, and I once again found myself at the 18+ NTRP National Championships, attempting to win the doubles title. My partner and I advanced to the Championship bracket on Sunday. We were finally in the position to pull it off.
It was not to be.
We lost both our matches on Championship Sunday. Every single set we dropped en route to that result was decided by a tie-breaker using the Coman format. Under the fatally flawed tie-breaker that I obnoxiously lobbied to eliminate the previous year, we won every time. In fact, we never lost a point in any of those tie-break games.
As we collected our fourth-place medals, I jokingly told the USTA National staffer who suffered through my tie-break escalation antics last year that I thought the organization should return to the short-set tie-break format. He laughed out loud.
Karma is rough.
AS they say ‘Be careful what you wish for’!