Fiend at Court Unplugged
ONE thing you can learn from the USTA official landing page for the Adult tournament structure is that ONE is a very important concept. That page touts that there is ONE nationwide structure of tournaments. ONE nationwide points-per-round ranking system. ONE standings list. That very same page later pivots sharply into a series of statements that describe areas where USTA Sections have latitude to make decisions to “best meet the needs of their adult players.” Unfortunately, the early implementation of those decisions has revealed that a little more rigor is needed in order to preserve the integrity required to truly have ONE working system.
The number of tournaments at each level is one of the bullet point examples of decisions that can be made at the Sectional level. That may have been a necessary concession to get the Sections to fall in line under a single national framework. I sincerely hope that it was all a part of the master plan all along to allow that to play out until enough data was generated to support imposing strict limits on the number of tournaments at each level. An argument can be made that we are already effectively at that point.
Three recent posts outlines disparities in how the USTA Sections are sanctioning tournaments at each level. “USTA Level 5 Tournament Landscape,” “Houston (Texas) We Have a Problem,” and “My Failure to see the Four-est for the Trees” are the ones to read if you missed that content.
The USTA Adult Tournament structure outlines a 7 tier system of tournaments. Per the USTA Adult and Family Tournament Sanctioning Regulations, sanctions for Levels 1-3 are awarded at the USTA National Level. Sanctions for tournaments at Levels 4-7 are under the purview of the individual Sections.
There is no hard limit on the number of Adult Level 4 tournaments that each Section can host under the regulations. While Sections are only permitted to have two “Closed” tournaments they can have as many “Open” tournaments at that level as they want. There is a recommendation that the number of Level 4 tournaments be fewer than the Level 5 tournaments, but some Sections are ignoring that guideline.
It may seem like an apples to oranges comparison, but it is interesting to look at the number of Level 4 tournaments that are conducted at the Junior Level. The table that originally ran in “My Failure to see the Four-est for the Trees” is augmented with the with Level 4 tournaments conducted for both the Boys and Girls 18 and Under divisions for 2021.
| Section | Adult 18+ Level 4 “Closed” NTRP | Adult 18+ Level 4 “Open” NTRP | Boys Junior 18U Level 4 “Closed” | Boys Junior 18U Level 4 “Open” | Girls Junior 18U Level 4 “Closed” | Girls Junior 18U Level 4 “Open” |
| Caribbean | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Eastern | 0 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Florida | 0 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| Hawaii Pacific | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Intermountain | 0 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Mid Atlantic | 0 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Middle States | 0 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Midwest | 2 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Missouri Valley | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| New England | 0 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Northern | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| Northern California | 2 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Pacific Northwest | 2 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 5 |
| Southern | 0 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| Southern California | 1 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| Southwest | 0 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Texas | 2 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| Totals | 10 | 41 | 59 | 61 | 62 | 63 |
If you are wondering why the numbers are very consistently 4 Open and 4 Closed tournaments for the Juniors in each Section, that is because that is the strict limit imposed by the Junior Tournament Regulations.
Section Level 4 Tournaments. Annually each Sectional Association shall be authorized to sanction:
USTA Junior Tournament Regulations, III.B.
• At least one and no more than four Closed Section Level 4 Tournaments that are limited to residents of the
Sectional Association; and
• Up to four Open Section Level 4 Tournaments that are open to players from any Sectional Association.
Each Section can have an additional closed Intrasectional Team tournament event. So there is an occasional 5 in the “Closed” table for Sections that exercised that option. I am assuming that every place where there are fewer than 4 tournaments is likely due to a COVID cancellation, with the exception of Hawaii Pacific.
One thing that is not apparent by examining the above table is that none of the Junior Level 4 tournaments include the Junior Sectional Championships. For Juniors, the Sectional level tournament are Level 3. Per the USTA Junior Tournament Regulations, each Section can sanction two closed Level 3 tournaments. At the National Level, the USTA can also sanction up to four additional Level 3 tournaments.
In Texas, one of those the two junior Level 3 Sanctions goes to “The Texas Slam” which is the stylized name for the Junior Sectional Championship that has all of the age divisions competing at the same place and time. The other Level 3 sanction is distributed across separate events for each age division, 18U, 16U, 14U, and 12U.
I started down this path because currently for Adults the Sectional Championships are sanctioned at a maximum of Level 4. It is the highest option that is available in the USTA Adult and Family Tournament Sanctioning Regulations where the total number of Level 4 tournaments is also unconstrained. From that environment, two fundamentally opposing philosophies of sanctioning have emerged at the Sectional level.
| Level 4 Should be Constrained Level 4 is reserved for the top level competition at the Sectional level. These are one or two marquis events that funnel player participation and attention to these larger tournaments. | Level 4 Should be Maximized Level 4 should be used as often as possible so that players in our Section have opportunity to win as many points as possible. |
In USTA Texas, both the Section office and playing community inherently understand that Sectional marquis events should be on a separate and higher tier than all the other tournaments. Since Level 4 is the highest level that a Section can sanction, Texas elected to make those tournaments Level 4 and schedule everything else as Level 5 and below. In fact you will see the “Constrained” philosophy reflected in Texas as well as the other Sections that had a thriving tournament culture before the new framework was implemented.
The “Maximized” philosophy can be seen in Southern, Intermountain, Mid-Atlantic, and Middle States. Left unconstrained, more Sections will likely move toward also maximizing their usage of Level 4 because their players would be at a disadvantage with fewer opportunities to win rankings points. Additionally, players will play out of Section a lot chasing the highest level tournaments.
On the surface it might sound appealing to have a lot of level 4 tournaments that people are willing to travel to play. Unfortunately it is not good for the overall tournament ecosystem. It is a genuine tragedy of the commons scenario.
Whatever the highest Level of tournaments that a person can enter, overpopulation at that level hurts the rest of the ecosystem. It once again turns tennis into a sport exclusively for the idle rich. Only people with enough resources and time to travel will be playing a handful of tournaments. Left unchecked, in the near future the NTRP rankings lists will be dominated by people who exclusively play those top Level tournaments.
The pipeline will be dry with no participation in events at the local level.
Fortunately for this one, there is a quick and obvious fix. First the USTA Adult and Family Tournament Regulations should be modified to bring sanctioning practices in alignment with the USTA Junior National Tournament framework. Specifically, each Section should be allowed to Sanction two closed Adult tournaments at Level 3. That is a quick fix for the excess of Level 4 tournaments that are already scheduled for 2022.
The second phase is to impose strict limitations on sanctions for tournaments to maintain incentives for players to participate at all tournament tiers. This is a case where the Junior Regulations already provides a reasonable starting point. 8 seems like an appropriate number of Level 4 tournaments. In case anyone is wondering, for the Juniors the number of Level 5 tournaments is unconstrained.
I still just starting to scratch the surface of what a sustainable “pyramid” should look like for Adult Tournaments. I will will pick back up on that theme next Friday when the “Unplugged” series of posts resumes.
- Adult Tournament Structure: Top Things to Know, USTA web page, undated, viewed 1/14/2022.
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking & Sanctioning Regulations, Adopted May 14, 2020 and Amended December 2020.
- USTA Junior Regulations, 2021.
- 2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranked Events, USTA Informational Document, undated, viewed 1/14/2022.
