Tennis News You Can Use
Over the weekend, the USTA sent out a letter to players who were slated to play in the individual NTRP National Championships in 2020. It was a follow up to a survey sent out to players shortly after the original event in April was cancelled. The survey was sent to explore the possibility that the NTRP Championships would be rescheduled for October of this year. This new communication makes it clear that there will be no tournament in 2020.
I have included the complete text at the bottom of the post. Based on two limited data points from the Fiend at Court household, only players who had accepted an endorsement to the 2020 NTRP Championships received the email. At the same time the letter includes information that is relevant to other players not on the distribution list for that message.
The updated latter published the dates for the NTRP Nationals for 2021. Once it will be conducted as four separate events, scattered across three sites.
April 9-11, 2021
18+ Singles in Surprise, AZ
50+ Singles in Orlando, FL
April 16-18, 2021 18+ Doubles in Surprise, AZ 50+ Doubles in Naples, FL
More significantly, it appears that every player who had accepted an endorsement and entered the 2020 tournament will receive an automatic acceptance into the 2021 Championships. The size of the field will be increased to accommodate a larger number of players.
No information as to how that might impact the scheduling or playing format was included in this recent communication. With the same number of days tentatively allocated to play the event, the physics of tennis tournaments would suggest that the playing format would have to be shortened. The standard scoring format for this event is Fast 4.
It appears that players who were eligible to play but declined a bid in 2020 will be required to earn a new 2021 endorsement. This will come from what continues to shape up as a COVID-19 induced abbreviated tournament season.
The announcement raises an interesting prospect of NTRP ratings levels. It has always been the practice that the championships in April were based off the previous year’s NTRP performance. Consequently, a player that qualified for the tournament might officially be bumped up to a higher NTRP level by the time the championships occurred the following spring.
Combining endorsements over two years raises the prospect that a player could actually be bumped up twice before playing the NTRP Nationals. I was wondering if the letter signaled intent by the USTA that there would be no annual ratings adjustments this year, but decided that was probably not the case. For one thing, that is a long time to leave self-rated players hanging out with the S designation.
Yesterday I wrote about nationals and some of the negative consequences to the product of tennis, consumer experience, and unsportsmanlike behavior. That was largely in the context of league play. I would observe that I have not experienced the same level of malfeasance associated with individual tournament play.
As I have stated before, I believe that the USTA created the individual NTRP nationals as an intentional incentive to drive participation in tournaments at the sectional level. From the data that I have scraped off the TennisLink, I do not believe that participation increased at all since the creation of the event.
It is bewildering to me to see the USTA continue to double down (or actually, coming in 2021, triple down) on that concept. I plan to explore that topic more fully this coming weekend.
