Fiend at Court Unplugged
New Year’s Day is when I traditionally sit down and map out my tournament plans for the year. My first stop is always the USTA schedule for the “National” Level tournaments. Since these tournaments can last up to a week, it is really important to get that time blocked off on my calendar. It is also a good jumping off point for thinking about how scheduling and publicizing tournaments has evolved in the internet era.
Publishing the National Tournament Calendar is a USTA self-imposed requirement formally codified in section IV of the USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking & Sanctioning Regulations. Before the digital revolution, the National Schedule was distributed by postal mail. Now it is a web page. Players are expected to know about it and remember seek it out.
Until 2021, USTA Texas also sent out a physical book that contained information for all tournaments scheduled in the Section for the coming year. A pdf of the document was also published, but I always gravitated to the physical book. It is a strange thing in retrospect, coming from a person who frequently laments “What year is this?!?!” when confronted with practices that are better done electronically.
With the advent of the new USTA unified adult tournament structure simultaneously deployed with the new USTA digital platform, the Texas tournament book became a relic of a bygone era. With the power of what was supposed to be the “Best in Class Digital Infrastructure and Platform”, paper books were obsolete. In hindsight, we know that the digital platform has not yet lived up to the promise.
In theory, we should be able to query the USTA Tournament Page to locate tournaments. However, not all tournaments for the coming year are populated in that system at this time. Additionally, some sections appear to be scheduling tournaments as a “rolling wave” with new tournaments populated on an ongoing basis. Long term planning can’t be done under that paradigm.
In 2021 I played a Level 5 tournament at the Greens Country Club in Oklahoma City. It makes sense for me because I am spending a lot of time in Wichita Falls taking care of the Maternal Umpire. Oklahoma City is a two hour drive from “the Falls.” As a point of reference, the Texas tournament hotbeds of Austin and San Antonio are 5 and 6 hours away from that location. In fact, the opportunity to play local tournaments across the Sectional border is a definite benefit of the new unified framework to me personally.
Currently in 2022, the Greens only has one Level 5 tournament scheduled. It is coming up fast on January 7. Looking back across 2021, the Greens hosted a Level 5 tournament every single month. That’s a total of twelve for anyone who needs a little help with the math. (As an editorial aside, that fact opens a whole new can of worms about disparities in how USTA Sections are sanctioning Level 5 tournaments that I am deferring until next Friday.)
For today, the salient point is these tournaments are not pinned on the calendar and published at the first of the year as they are at the National Level and also previously in Texas. In other words, scheduling of USTA tournaments is starting to be performed on more of a rolling basis. I am pretty sure that there will be 11 more Level 5 tournaments at the Greens popping up throughout the year.
It could be claimed that the dynamic nature mimics scheduling “agility” similar to UTR. However, that flexibility should only exist for lower Level tournaments. The USTA needs to lean into the stability advantage that it already enjoyed with the annual tournament and rankings cycle. Instead, the USTA appears to be moving away from that model. It is not clear if this is an intentional strategic decision or an accident.
Without prompts for long term planning of tournament participation, the USTA has created a situation where players need to remember to search for tournaments that may have “popped up” in their area and then scramble to make arrangements to play if they are interested. When you couple that with a lack of concentrated promotion of tournaments to local players, it only exacerbates the problem.
The current implementation creates a lot of “friction” that impedes player registration in tournaments. In light of the tennis participation boom, tournament play should be surging right along with it. It is simply not happening. A large part of the reason is a digital platform that is not all that engaging, a lack of an anchor that prompts long term planning, and a complete absence of tournament marketing and promotion.
I think we need to bring back the books. It is better than what we have now.
- Adult Tournaments National Schedule, USTA, viewed 12/28/2021.
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking & Sanctioning Regulations, Adopted May 14, 2020 and Amended December 2020.
I have been trying to work on our schedule this past week and I totally agree with everything you have said.
However, Fernando Velasco in Austin does reach out to remind former participants that his tournaments are coming up. As well, I have had some notices from Chris Singer in Tyler.
Not much notice from others even though we try to play every level 5 tournament in Texas.
I, too, love the Texas USTA paper Tournament booklet because it also had some rules and point system guidance in it! I still have the last one they sent out and I use it as a basis for what to expect online.
I did notice that there are more level 5 tournaments in the Houston area in 2022.
I agree totally!