Fiend at Court Unplugged
This is the second of a two part series on the draw formats that are available to USTA tennis tournament organizers under the new consolidated framework for 2021. Yesterday I introduced the table and described the Round Robin and Round Robin with Playoff formats.
Today I am describing the remaining options that are available to tournament organizers. The order of the formats presented in my cross reference table aligns with the order in the current and official USTA infographics of the structure. However, that isn’t the most natural order for discussing the variations. Apologies for jumping around a bit.
Single Elimination
Single elimination is the most simple form of a tournament draw. Essentially all players are thrown together in a single bracket and losers of the matches are eliminated from the tournament. The cool kids sometimes refer to this format as “One and Done.”
Anyone who watches televised tennis will be familiar with this format. The majority of professional events are single elimination brackets, though there are some exceptions. It may be the most generally familiar format to most people.
At the recreational level, single elimination is relatively rare. I wasn’t surprised to see it included in the table, but I was surprised to see that it is only a valid format for Level 2 and Level 3 tournaments. Level 2 and 3 are tournaments at the National Level, thus it would be my expectation that single elimination would be paired with Voluntary Consolation at these events.
I cannot imagine that a tournament organizer would advertise a single elimination Level 2 or Level 3 tournament without Voluntary Consolation. Similarly, I would not anticipate that many players would travel a significant distance for the prospect of a single match.
Voluntary Consolation
I am trying to decipher the logic of listing Voluntary Consolation as a separate format coupled with the fact that it is not strictly paired with Single Elimination formats. I mean… in a sense, playing consolation is always voluntary. Players habitually opt out of the back draw all the time.
To the best of my recollection, I have played in exactly one tournament that regularly offers the Voluntary Consolation format. That would be the Westwood Senior Championships Cat 2 in Austin, Texas. The way the format works is that there is a consolation sign up sheet at the tournament desk. First match losers can signal their intent to play the consolation back draw via that mechanism.
One drawback of Voluntary Consolation is that typically the draw isn’t made until all the players in the draw have played at least one match. This means there can be a day or two of delay before the consolation draw is published. While Voluntary Consolation saves tournament organizers from having to schedule courts for back draw matches that don’t occur, it does require dynamic scheduling while the event is in progress. There are a lot of tournament directors in my orbit that would handle the dynamic scheduling just fine. Others — garner less faith.
The way it works in my practical experience is that I sign up for voluntary consolation. It then pours rain for at least 24 hours, delaying the tournament by at least a day. Eventually, to recover schedule at the tournament for the main draw, consolation brackets are cancelled. That probably correlates closer to the fact that the event is in Austin rather than than the bracket format.
I don’t think that Voluntary Consolation makes much sense in any format other than single elimination. The basic reason for that is because all other formats have come with a pre-bracketed back draw. I will put a little more color on that as we explore the remaining options.
First Match Consolation
First Match Consolation is the most common format of tournament offered at Adult tournaments in my home section of Texas. In the first Match Consolation format, the back draw matches are pre-bracketed. That means that all the losers of a first round match are already paired with which the loser of another match.
Contrasting this format with Voluntary Consolation, the draw is made only after the back draw sign ups are finalized. This is why Voluntary Consolation in conjunction with First Match Consolation makes no sense to me. If the back draw is not pre-bracketed, then the format is really Single Elimination with Voluntary Consolation.
I suspect the explanation is that there is underlying direction to tournament organizers that consolation must be offered. If so, there is a more simple way to impose that direction without listing that format in the absence of Single Elimination as an option.
Feed In Championships
I regard the Feed In Championship format as the highest evolved form of bracketed tournament competition. It is essentially a double elimination tournament in which the loser of a first round match can claw back through the back draw to finish as high as fifth in the tournament.
The way this format works is that the losers of the first round matches play each other in the back draw. The winner of each first round back draw match is then matched up against a loser from the second round matches in the front draw. The feed in back draw moves the bracket locations around of e front draw losers drop into the back draw. The odds of playing the same player in a Feed In Championship tournament are pretty low, until the final rounds of the back draw are played out.
The USTA implementation of the Feed In Championships is typically Feed in Consolation through the Quarters (FICQ). I have seen references to FIC16, but have not actually experienced that one in practice. In the USTA FICQ implementation the losers of the semifinal match play for third which is always implemented in Cat/Level 1 tournaments because they are playing for a “bronze ball” which is kind of a big deal.
Compass Draw
A Compass Draw is a bracketed format intended to guarantee three matches for every competitor. It is implemented essentially a series of consolation brackets, which is shrouded in confusing directional terminology.
The Compass Draw starts out with all the teams in one bracket. The winners of the first round matches go into the “East” draw and the losers slide back into the “West” draw. A new consolation bracket is spawned for the losers of next two successive rounds. The Round 2 losers from the East go into the “North” bracket, and the Round 2 Losers from the West go into the “South.”
Third round losers from the North, South, East, West go into Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest brackets. It is fortunate that the creation of consolation brackets stops there because I am pretty sure that further directional language like “South-Southeast” would turn me in to the wicked witch of the “West-Southwest.”
Tournament organizers like the compass draw because each player moves through the draw at the same rate of match progression. Thus, it is easier to schedule and plan. Players like the format because of the increased number of guaranteed matches.
I am not a big fan of the Compass Draw when ranking points are assigned based on finishing position. At the end of the tournament a bunch of players played a bunch of matches, but I am never really sure how the majority of the players actually performed.
I personally would prefer to play a Feed In Consolation tournament paired with a voluntary “Third Chance” back draw if the objective is to guarantee three matches. That is harder for tournament directors, however, because there is asymmetry between the number of matches in the back and front draws.
As I have mentioned previously, a player who loses a first round match in a Feed In Consolation tournament can still finish as high as fifth. In a compass match the best a player can do is win the “East” draw. I don’t know what the heck that even means.
Curtis Consolation
I have to admit that this was a new one for me. According to the description on the USTA assets page, the Curtis Consolation is used when there is a shortage of courts or when a Feed in Championship is constrained by time.
Essentially the Curtis Consolation is a Feed in Championship, but the true feed in doesn’t start until the round of 16. Players who lose earlier rounds are placed into a back draw, but have no chance to finish in the top 16. In addition, it is not required that the first round losers play more than a couple of rounds in the back draw.
This format has a place if court capacity is an issue. It would be awesome if so many players were playing events that courts or time became a legitimate constraint. I am less enthusiastic about the format if the shortage of courts is induced by hosting a tournament at a venue without enough courts to support it in the first place.
Team Format
I have a question into “AdultTournaments@usta.com” inquiring about the Team Format. This is a new one for me and there is nothing on the USTA website that illuminates what this is. I have yet to receive a response and I am not terribly optimistic.
In the meanwhile, my prevailing theory is that this may be a non-elimination bracket played completely out. I have seen this commonly used in scholastic team tennis. It is a lot like the compass draw but with numbers reflecting order of finish rather than directions. In order for this format to work, a precise number of competitors are needed. This format only works for draw sizes of 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.
Draw Format Perspectives
This series of posts added a little more detail behind the draw formats that players will be experiencing once the 2021 USTA tournament calendar is published. I suspect that we will likely see regional gravitation to the formats that most closely resemble the current tournament offerings in the areas that already have an existing base of tournament players.
Next weekend I plan on diving into the points structure to determine what impact that aspect is likely to have on player participation at the various levels of tournaments.
- 2021 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranked Events, USTA Website Hosted Infographic, viewed 10/23/2020.
- “Non-Elimination Tournament Page“, USTA assets document, viewed 10/23/2020.
- “Compass Draw Sheets,” USTA assets document, viewed 10/23/2020.
- “The Curtis Consolation,” USTA assets document, viewed 10/23/20.
The Fiend at Court Unplugged series runs on this site every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Unleashed series topics cover a broad range of topics.
