The USTA ServeTennis platform can be configured to prompt players for a T-shirt size as they register for tournaments. I never quite know how to fill in that free-text field. To put an even finer point on it, I envy the male half of the playing population who don’t have to speculate on whether the size in question will be for a unisex or gender-specific shirt. If you are a dude playing a tennis tournament, your shirt will be in men’s sizing. If there are women in the tournament, your shirt will be in unisex sizing, which – spoiler alert – is just men’s sizing by another name.
For women, it’s complicated. I have played in women’s only tournaments where the T-shirt handed out was in unisex sizing. Other women’s exclusive tournaments routinely provide shirts in women’s sizes. The Westwood tournament in Texas, which includes both men’s and women’s divisions, orders women’s shirts for the women and men’s shirts for the men. However, some women prefer the men’s cut at that tournament because the women’s T-shirts they order have a tight, form-fitting cut. I habitually go a size up for that particular tournament.
This weekend, I am writing about small things within the tournament ecosystem that could be improved with automation or better user interface design. As an example, the tournament I am playing this weekend actually offered guidance for marking the shirt sizes on the “Overview” tab within ServeTennis. However, that information is not present on the page where players are asked for that input during the registration process. Even if I had noticed that detail before I entered this particular tournament, it is wildly optimistic to hope that I would remember what it said once I am a few pages into the registration process. Still, it is a best practice for tournament directors to provide T-shirt sizing guidance on the overview page, even though I did not notice it was there in this case.
However, it could work even better with a few minor tweaks to ServeTennis. Players should be able to see T-shirt sizing details on the same page that requests that input from them. A short description indicating whether the sizing was unisex or women’s would be extraordinarily helpful. Even better would be if tournament directors could configure the available size options to constrain player selections to the precise and consistent nomenclature of the available sizes. Behind the scenes, the ServeTennis platform should calculate the total number of each size selected, along with a detailed report of the choices made by each player.
As the implementation currently stands, I provide a lot of contingency details when sizing nomenclature is collected via an ambiguous free-form text field. Essentially, I write a couple of sentences indicating my size for both women’s and unisex shirts. Even for players who are more succinct with their answers, I am sure there are variations. For example, XL, Extra-Large, Extra Large, and countless variations might obviously all indicate the same size but still require a human to manually sort that out. A constrained checkbox or pulldown selection mechanism would be better because that would produce consistent data.
In the whole grand scheme of tournament organization, improving the process for collecting T-shirt sizes might seem like a minor detail. However, it is an opportunity to score a significant quick win that creates a better experience for everyone. Removing that tiny annoyance would make players and tournament organizers feel seen and supported by the USTA. That would free everyone to focus on what really matters: the tournament itself.
Format
BIA
Polar Bear Dri-Fit long sleeve shirt, which you will select your size when registering. For those who did not select one in advance, we may have extra shirts to purchase for $25.00 on a first-serve. Shirts are unisex – Please select XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL. If you do not want a shirt, just write “None”.
Ya know, my original draft included the phrase “Sorry, Fernando.” I didn’t scroll down that far on the overview page before entering.