Yesterday’s post compared and contrasted the ranking points that were awarded to players that competed in the 18+ Women’s 4.5 and 5.0 Singles divisions at this year’s USTA NTRP National Championships. I noted that the 4.5 division attracted 13 entries, which is an awkward number in any draw format. That is especially the case for the two-stage format of play used at the NTRP National Championships
The tournament conducted the 13-player event using three preliminary Round Robin groups. The math dictates that one of those had 5 players while the other two pools had 4. The second stage advanced 6 players to a Championship bracket with two byes. I believe that is the most equitable way to conduct that format when there are 13 players. I have absolutely no issues with the Tournament Referee’s decision to play it that way. It is the best possible solution under the circumstances.
However, analyzing this particular event made me realize that there are other options available to the tournament director. That exercise also reveals that nothing in the public-facing policy document prohibits alternative implementations. Indulging in a little overthinking along those lines was simply irresistable.
Exploring an Alternate Universe
The advantage of advancing 6 players from three Round robin pools, is that the top two finishers from each group are advanced to the Championship stage. USTA Regulation II.B.6.c provides an algorithm for making the determination of which two players that will be. (That procedure was recently explored in “Breaking the Round Robin.”) That puts the tournament organizers into a well-defined and defensible position should questions arise over how players were assigned to the follow-on brackets once play in the initial stage is completed.
Unfortunately, slotting six players into an 8-player Championship bracket requires two byes which means that 2 of the six players do not have a chance to win the standard number of points for winning the tournament. One potential solution to that problem is to advance 8 players to the Championship stage. However, that opens a different can of worms when figuring out which 8 players that will be.
For this particular 13-player event, one option for selecting a final 8 could still advance the top 2 from each Round Robin Pool, and then the two “best” performing players from those remaining in the three groups. The challenge in doing that is that there is no public-facing USTA procedure for making the determination of “best” performace in this situation. A savvy tournament referee will not put themselves in that inevitably controversial position.
It is a slippery slope that no one should ever seriously consider going down, but one method would be to select from among the players who were eliminated from the second position on tie-break criteria. The procedure in USTA Regulation II.B.6.c could still be used to break ties in that scenario. If that didn’t produce enough players, then the same exercise could be completed for the 3rd place finishers in each pool. In any case, it gets convoluted pretty fast.
Byes are necessary in the two stage format of play when the entries in the player pool do not align well to the format. If the divisions at the tournament were consistently filling up to 32 players, then the flaws in the points per round approach would never assert themselves. The ideal solution is to have full draws, but that is rarely happening at these events.
Back to Reality
I spent a few hot minutes believing that a mistake was made in the Round Robin tie break procedure used to advance two of the players from one of the pools in the Women’s 4.5 bracket. However, once I realized that one of the players defaulted one of her preliminary matches as a no-show, what happened made sense. There is a USTA policy that takes precedence over the Round Robin tie-break procedures.
A player who is defaulted for any reason other than lateness shall not play in subsequent matches and may not be declared the winner of the round robin. A player who is defaulted, retires, or creates a walkover shall finish lower than every player who has an identical match record.
USTA Regulation II.B.d (Excerpt)
There is no way to know how the walkover would have impacted the results in that group if the match had actually been played. However, it definitely affected which players reached the Championship stage and which ones were relegated to the back draw.
Points Absurdity in the Back Draw
In the two stage format used at the NTRP National Championships, competitors are slotted into a secondary bracket to finish out the event. In addition to the “Championship” stage, there are up to three additional consolation brackets.
The “Round Robin Preliminary Rounds & SE Draw of 8 Playoff” table that is applicable to this event indicates that each round in the “2nd Place Round Robin Bracket” is worth 138 points up to a maximim of 414 points. There are also entries in that table for 3rd and 4th place brackets where those values are 114/342 and 90/270.
I was wondering which point table the USTA tournament software used for this particular 13 person draw. Since the Championship bracket included both the first and second place finishers, the single consolation bracket should award no more than 114 points per round in the secondary stage.
When I pulled the tournament ranking summary for Kristine Smith, I noticed that she earned a total of 876 performance points for the event. Her two wins in the preliminary rounds were each worth 231 points for a total of 462. That means she was awarded 414 points from the back draw. That clearly establishes that the “2nd Place Round Robin Bracket” was used for the consolation bracket.
I believe that to be a logic error in the ranking system software. Smith’s three wins at the secondary stage should have been worth 114 points per round for a maximim of 342. She was awarded an excess of 120 ranking points from the event.
Logically, Smith finished 7th in this tournament by winning the back draw. However, she received more points than the 5th and 6th place finishers. That is absurd. However, if this event had been conducted as a Feed in Consolation through the Quarters (FICQ) which is the most appropriate format for a Level 1 National Championship, her 7th place finish would have earned her 900 points.
The bottom line is that the ranking points defined in the 2023 USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System are capricious and arbritrary. What is ultimately awarded swings wildly based on variables that are outside of the player’s control. That includes the number of players who enter an event, the number of players in the initial round robin pool, and whether or not a player receives a bye during the bracket stage.
Outside of the logic error that was just highlighted here, for the most part the tournament software is calculating ranking points correctly. The problem is in the USTA’s Ranking Tables that defines how the software works. The National Adult Competition Committee really needs to take a hard look at this.
Finishing Shots
Yesterday I promised that today’s post would examine the ramifications of second-stage byes. I will get to that tomorrow to close out the weekend.
- 2023 USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System, USTA hosted document, last viewed April 28, 2023.
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking, & Sanctioning Regulations, USTA Regulation, as amended July 31, 2021. (Editorial note: Assumed to be current. This is the one off the USTA “About Adult Tournaments” page.)
- Friend at Court: The Handbook of Tennis Rules and Regulations, USTA, 2023
