Once upon a time, the Adult Masters Championships was the premiere Adult USTA tournament in the Texas Section. While arguments can be made that the event still enjoys an elevated status among players, it is hard to deny that it isn’t what it used to be. This weekend, I am examining some recent evolutions in the tennis ecosystem that have diminished the luster of this illustrious event. The lessons learned are essential for informing future strategies for rebuilding and sustaining Adult tennis in the United States.
While the Texas players and Section staff take pride in the traditional draw format used for the event, it is similar to the end-of-year Championships on the WTA and ATP tours. Only the “Top 8” ranked players who apply are selected for the tournament, which is conducted in two parts. The first stage groups the players into two round robin pools. In Texas, the winners of the first stage round robins play a winner-take-all Championship.
While Texas didn’t invent it, the widespread adoption at premiere events at the professional level is evidence that it is a pretty good way to structure a competition. The Masters has been wildly popular with the players. However, Texas has conducted the last two masters in an alternate format and does not currently plan to use the traditional format in 2024 either.
It is a fair question to consider what precipitated the format change in the first place. The primary driver is that the USTA Ranking Point system does not currently accommodate a logical distribution of ranking points for that draw type. In fact, since the new unified adult ranking system was unveiled a few years ago, there have been continuous systemic issues with the rankings points allocated in all tournaments that use the two-stage structure.
Last year the Texas Masters was conducted using a compass draw. The players didn’t like it for many reasons. First, the ranking points in the back draw are not commensurate with the order of finish awarded for other formats. Additionally, a loss in the first match eliminated those players from any chance at winning the championship, which isn’t the case in the traditional format.
This year Texas elected to go with a full 8-person/team round robin at the Masters. Because that requires a lot of matches, the Fast4 format was used. The plan for 2024 is also to conduct the event as a round robin but to reduce the selection list to only the top 5 players.
Those wild gyrations have significantly changed what was formerly a prestigious event for the Section. Fundamentally what “broke” it is a lack of USTA National support in the ranking point schedules and the tournament software. The only effective solution to restore the event to what it used to be is addressing the root cause. An update to the USTA Ranking Point System is desperately needed to accommodate the traditional format.
I don’t think the USTA has prioritized working on a solution for this problem at the National Level. In fact, I am becoming convinced that forcing Texas to abandon the traditional Masters format isn’t regarded as a problem at all. This is particularly sad because fixing this issue would also resolve the organization’s same problems with ranking point allocations from the NTRP National Championships.
I will continue to explore other emerging themes from the 2023 Texas Masters this weekend. In the meantime, “Tennis Tournaments: The Masters Motivation” captures how the tournament used to be a powerful extrinsic motivator for participation. That impact has been greatly diminished, and that’s a shame.
This is so on point. I think the shift happened when tournament nationals was introduced. Prior to that, the Texas Masters was the top/ultimate event to close out the tournament season — it was as far as you could go as a tourney player. Now it’s just a big-point stop in the pursuit of a golden ticket to tourney nationals, hence the obsession with points from the event and the clusterf*** that followed after USTA redid the points system and screwed over the great format that the Masters used. Back in the “old” days, the only thing Master’s points got you was better seeding in the early part of the following year. It was much more about squaring off one last time with the folks you kept going up against in “Sunday Club” at tournaments all year long. You were guaranteed 3 finals-quality matches in the round robin, plus one additional, typically epic battle if you made it to the finals of your bracket. And the days when all finals matches were officiated made it extra special.
I think the USTA would like to abandon PPR and just use WTN going forward, ie basically going back to the “star ranking” system it abandoned years ago.
I agree with you 100%. The minority are more interested in points than what it was for many years, a fun and competitive event.