An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The Women’s 4.5 division at the 2022 USTA 18+ NTRP Doubles National Championships had exactly 12 teams in the final entry list. That number provides a lot of options on how to divide the players into round robin groups. The ultimate decision was to conduct the first round robin stage as two six team pools. The downstream side effects on this one are pretty wild.
The USTA NTRP National Championships informational web pages, as well as the individual tournament event pages for the 2022 tournaments, all claim that the scoring format is played as best of three short sets. However, at least one division this year was contested using full six game sets including a full third. The question is… Why?
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Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers will be contested this weekend, an under the radar major coaching change, and another sign of the end of civility in tennis.
I am going to start this post with a provocative statement. Whoever came up with the USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System does not understand how tournament rankings should work. Period. I am astonished that these errors ever existed in the first place. It is profoundly disappointing that attempts to highlight these issues have gone unaccepted and unacknowledged.
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I have previously written a lot about the the USTA NTRP National Championships as well as the shortened scoring format used at that event. Today’s post is an executive summary specifically written to bring Senior competitors up to speed on this (relatively) new USTA initiative. I am an active Senior age group Level 1 tournament player who has also participated in the NTRP National Championship tournament. I don’t think there are a large number of people that have competed in both event types.
In officiated matches, tennis players have the right to call the referee to court if they disagree with the umpire’s interpretation of tennis law. Unless the referee is sitting on-court, the chair umpire has the final decision authority on questions of fact that might arise during the match. The referee may only rule on interpretation of tennis law when summoned to a court.
My tennis racquet bag tends to run on the heavy side because I carry a lot of gear onto the court that might be needed during a match. I also keep a lot of things in the back of my car that could be essential situationally or in between matches. Today I am providing a glimpse into the items I have at the ready as well as my system for organization.
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Heading into New Year’s Eve last year, I shared 12 “Gifts” that people can give themselves to improve the quality of their tennis life. Each of these items is a tennis related life hack shamelessly adapted from a cybersecurity career development webinar that I once delivered. In 2022, I am taking an in-depth look at each one of those items on first Friday of each month. The “Gift” for April is new tennis skills.
There are some intractable features of tennis that put the sport at a significant disadvantage to pickleball for attracting and retaining new players. As discussed in yesterdays post, the pickleball learning curve is less daunting and the sport is physically less demanding than tennis. Additionally, the geometry of pickleball supports better socialization and it takes significantly less time to complete a game. It is no wonder why the growth of pickleball participation threatens to completely overtake tennis.
The April edition of RSi magazine featured an article on how GiGi Fernandez is embracing pickleball. With 17 Grand Slam doubles titles under her belt — combined with notoriety as one of the best tennis coaches for adult doubles — it is a bad omen that Fernandez is adding pickleball to her instructional portfolio.