I will never forget the first time I saw Chelsea Grear on a tennis court. My doubles partner and I were watching tournament matches from the clubhouse patio at the Courtyard Tennis Club as Chelsea launched herself into the sky to play an aggressive overhead off a decent lob. It was immediately apparent that Chelsea had a vertical leap you rarely encounter in women’s 4.5 tennis.
The first order of business after seeing that happen was to make sure my doubles partner knew that if she ever saw me jump that high, to go ahead and call 911 as I was going to need an ambulance immediately after slamming back down to earth. Once that was taken care of, the next priority was obtaining as much scouting information as possible about Chelsea and her partner, as we likely would match up with them at some point in the tournament. In addition to watching her matches with rapt attention, that also involved talking to people from her local area for potential insight.
When asking around that day, I learned that Chelsea had been a shooting guard for the women’s basketball team at the University of New Mexico and that she also spent some time in the WNBA. I also heard she had been a lightning rod for grievances and complaints as she started playing in USTA League as a beginner at the 3.5 level. However, she didn’t do anything wrong other than being a gifted athlete. As it turns out, Chelsea is the perfect case study of a toxic cultural norm of USTA League tennis. In fact, I don’t have to come up with the words to describe it myself because it is codified directly into the USTA National League Regulations.
Players who are good athletes or intend to spend a great deal of time taking lessons and practicing should be aware that their improvement may be significant enough to surpass their original self-rating during the local league season or championship play. To avoid NTRP Dynamic Disqualification, these players should enter at a higher NTRP level of play at the beginning of the local league season.
Excerpt from the 2024 USTA National League Regulations, December 7, 2023
I am not aware of any other nationally regulated sport that discourages and punishes people for rapid mastery and improvement in skill levels. I would expect that the USTA might want to attract good athletes and people who take a lot of lessons and spend a lot of time practicing. It is what full engagement looks like.
Every once in a while, I encounter a person who takes issue with the idea that USTA League is not hospitable to good athletes. The excerpt above from the Regulations certainly doesn’t exclude them. However, what it says, in essence, is that good athletes and people who work hard are welcome to play, but they must self-rate at a level that ensures they will lose consistently until they are awarded a computer rating. (At which point, people will still complain that their first year was deliberately sandbagged.)
All the rules and regulations surrounding self-rating and dynamic disqualification are based on a sense of entitlement that computer-rated players will win most of their matches against newcomers. It is an endemic part of the culture of USTA League tennis that has spilled over into NTRP tournaments as well. Worse, it makes players reluctant to play matches if they don’t believe they can win, which stunts their development.
Over the past couple of years, I have caught up with Chelsea at the National Senior Women’s Clay Court Championships in Houston. The good news is that the drama surrounding her initial NTRP rating mostly escaped her awareness. She was never dynamically disqualified but did advance up through the NTRP levels pretty quickly and is now settled in as a solid 4.5.
Fortunately, Chelsea was not directly exposed to complaints of being “too athletic” when she initially self-rated at 3.5 and subsequently played her way through 4.0 League matches. As an athlete who played a serious sport where fan heckling and the haters are real, she might have been inured against sensitivity to that kind of chatter.
When I talk to Chelsea, I find a wonderful person with a singular drive to compete in athletics. She is trying to be the best player she can be and is fortunate to possess some natural athletic abilities that some of us must work much harder to achieve. It is truly unfortunate that some people don’t relish the opportunity to compete against a great athlete. However, it is tragic that the USTA League Regulations create and reinforce the idea that these players are potentially doing something wrong when there is rapid advancement.
Changing people and cultural attitudes takes time. However, eliminating the parts in the USTA League Regulations that support and sanction unwelcoming behavior and resentment needs to change. Everything the USTA publishes should encourage players to embrace the opportunity to compete against elite athletes as they pass through the NTRP system. Updating the USTA League Regulations with that perspective would be an excellent first start.
In many ways, Chelsea Grear is a tennis success story. She has survived within the USTA League Tennis ecosystem. She has also engaged with both NTRP and age-group open tournaments, which are considerably better environments for people pursuing high-performance levels in the sport. However, many other people in her position give tennis a try, have a negative experience, and fail to persevere. It isn’t good riddance but rather a tragedy.
2024 USTA League National Regulations, USTA publication, December 7, 2023.
I can see what you’re saying and there’s merit to what you say. But, the main thing I’d think the majority of USTA players want is to play players at their correct level. It’s no fun to play to be a 3.5 and play 4.0 players if you’re trying to win, for example. The worst part about USTA in my experience is that they almost encourage players to play down, regardless of what they say in the fine print. Or that for each player that might be grievanced and bumped up, 20 players continue to stay underrated unfairly. In some adult rec sports, I’m sure they don’t wait a full year to bump a player up to the next level like the USTA does, so that’s something to remember, too.
From your story about Chelsea, it sounds like she was 4.0 ability within 1-2 months of playing, but I don’t know. I can’t really comment on her specifically. Now, S players are obviously trickier than C players. If someone is a legit 3.5C and happens to greatly improve over the course of a year, great for the most part. It’s still no fun with opponents if this player becomes 4.5 ability in less than a year, but great for them and they were at their correct rating at the start of the year possibly. For S players who greatly improve in less than a year, there’s a bit more gray area and this player highly likely isn’t at their correct rating. There’s obviously blatant sandbagging that happens throughout the country and the USTA mostly turns a blind eye to it. Self rating and quickly becoming much better than your self rating while still playing at that rating is a form of sandbagging. There’s a fine line or a line to it all though. The question is where do we or the USTA draw the line. I almost don’t care what the line is that much, just that the USTA remains consistent with that line, which they clearly do not do.