I am wrapping up this “Unplugged” weekend with a semi-hot take. The only thing worse than rainouts in USTA League play is scheduling the makeups. The inevitable prospect of rescheduling matches cancelled by the weather is one of the primary reasons I am reluctant to step up and captain teams anymore. Because rosters are not locked in when a match is rained out, it is up to the two captains to work out when and where individual lines will be played. Finding a time when four players across both teams can align their schedules to play at a certain place and time is an absolute beating.
In my captaining experience, this is how it typically goes down. I work out a few prospective times with the players on our team and message the other captain with that proposal. She does not respond until after some or all of those times have passed. I then go back to my team to work out additional options, and this time, the other captain immediately replies that she will check with her team. Her entire roster places her on their “blocked callers” list and refuses to respond to her messages. After she threatens them with a court injunction — or worse, that they will have to play singles for the rest of the season — someone reluctantly agrees to the match time. At that point, I discover that during the lengthy delay, my entire team has decided to run off to the Bahamas together.
The last time I captained a USTA League team was before the pandemic, the subsequent tennis boom, and the pickleball land grab. Consequently, I never had to deal with the court shortage facing current captains. I am told it is pretty common to work out a mutually agreeable time and then have to scramble to find a court. I had to move mid-match during a makeup a few weeks ago because the facility did not have a contiguous open block of court time necessary to play it.
Rescheduling matches that can not be played due to weather is even more complicated when both teams are in the race to advance to playoffs or win the league outright. In that case, in addition to the standard complications, both teams will be jockeying for the times when their best players are available… even if they were not in the lineup when the rainout occurred.
I have long believed that one of the desperately needed enhancements to the USTA’s digital infrastructure for league play is an electronic blind roster exchange. When you think about it, the current method of swapping rosters via paper at match time is from another era. Worse, almost no one (with the exception of the Trophy Husband) bothers to print out the roster form provided by the USTA. Consequently, the exchange of lineups is frequently a spectacle of the captains digging through their bags for a piece of scrap paper to scrawl out an illegible indication of the players on each line.
The application used at the Tom Fey Tri-Level National Invitational is a pretty good exemplar of how something like that could work. I love the fact that each captain has to submit their roster via the app by a deadline, at which point both rosters become visible. That is so much better than putting a piece of cardstock over one roster while the other team fills in the other side. At a Texas Sectional Championship event a couple of years ago, our team was first to fill in our lineup only to watch the other team take the clipboard and disappear around the corner out of the sight of the tournament desk. The rubber band holding down the cover sheet isn’t exactly an effective security mechanism should another captain be inclined to take a peek before committing to their own lineup.
A digital blind roster exchange could be extraordinarily helpful for rainout situations. If the roster was locked in at the scheduled match time, rain or shine, the complex messaging between captains and players could be streamlined significantly. In fact, the USTA digital infrastructure could even provide that communication mechanism. It is a lot easier for players to work out the makeup time directly than to have to work through two busy and harried captains as intermediaries.
Of course, the devil is always in the details. At the “Lovely Tennis Lunch” that resulted from a rainout last weekend, we discussed this prospect and some of the rule complications. For example, what if a player got injured or was going to be out of town for a couple of weeks after the match was supposed to occur. Substitutions could be allowed in those situations, perhaps with some rule enhancements. For example, if one team has to make a roster adjustment, the other team should have the opportunity to see the change that was made, and then be allowed to modify their own players on that line if desired.
Another alternative I have seen implemented in leagues in other areas, is having a designated “makeup” date on the schedule. The problem with that approach is court capacity. However, if someone booked a facility with a lot of courts that isn’t frequently in the mix for USTA League play, such as a local high school, make-up Saturday could take on tournament-like festive proportions. It might be fun.
While there’s no perfect solution to the rainout conundrum, it’s clear that something needs to change. Between the endless back-and-forth scheduling struggles, the stress of finding available courts, and the strategic maneuvering that comes with rescheduling critical matches, captains are shouldering an enormous burden. A digital blind roster exchange could be a game-changer, bringing a level of efficiency and fairness that USTA League play sorely needs.
Until that happens, I will stick to my original statement. The only thing worse than rainouts in USTA League play is scheduling the makeups.
