The USTA Friend at Court contains a table of guidelines for the maximum number of daily matches for a player within a division in a USTA tennis tournament. Per the tennis triple constraint model that was the subject of yesterday’s post, the various scoring methods in that table are the qualitative aspects of match play that constrains the calendar time and schedule for the tournament.
It is important to note that the limitations defined in this USTA table are guidelines rather than requirements. That means that a tournament director can deviate from the guidelines if necessary. However, if tournaments are being scheduled where entire draws exceed the recommended maximums, then the organizers are probably not compliant with the spirit and intent of the guidelines.
The following image is an excerpt from that USTA Table. (No image? Your email privacy settings are probably blocking it and you need to view this post directly on the website.)
The limitations in the table are framed out in terms of “divisions.” This has brought me to the realization that the USTA definition of division is different than the way I typically use the term. The distinction is important because one of the footnotes to the USTA Scheduling Guidelines table indicates that the limitations apply to each division separately when a player enters more than one division.
Following is the official USTA definition of “division” per the glossary in the Friend at Court.
Division. Division refers to one or two events in a tournament in which the eligibility criteria are identical. For example, the Girls’ 16 Singles and Girls’ 16 Doubles are two events but only one division because their eligibility criteria are identical.
USTA Friend at Court, Glossary
That definition sparks a rant on crossover entries that I am electing to defer until tomorrow.
Format of Play Implications
It is intuitive that the most restrictive daily match restrictions are in place for tournaments that play a full three sets. If a tournament uses a tiebreak in lieu of the third set, then an additional match is allowed. From the table, the USTA is treating three set short matches as equivalent to full set matches with a 3rd set super breaker.
Adult Level 1 Tournaments are advertised as “up to 7 days” in calendar duration. If a Feed-In-Consolation through the Quarterfinals (FICQ) is used AND the scoring format is best of three full sets, then the tournament is constrained to 128 participants. Players who reach the Semifinals of the Main draw will play 7 matches, or one a day. The constraint is rooted in the back draw as those players have to play two matches per day to accommodate the feed-in mechanism. A player that loses a first round match in a 128 person FICQ draw, and fights their way all the way back to the 5th-6th consolation finals match, will play 13 total matches.
So what happens if more than 128 singles players or doubles teams enter a Level 1 event that was intended to be FICQ? By definition, the maximum calendar duration for a Level 1 tournament is constrained to 7 days. That means that one of the following factors in the triple constraint model has to be modified to make the event work.
- Number of Competitors i.e., Selection Criteria: The total number of players selected for the event will be capped at 128.
- Qualitative Match Play Attributes
- Draw Format Modifications. Changing the draw format to reduce the total number of matches required.
- Scoring Format Modifications. Changing the match scoring format to stay within the maximum daily match guidelines for individual players.
Considering those options, my personal preference is that tournaments would go to selection criteria. Having participation rates that high would be a good problem to have for women’s senior tennis. Getting to participate in Nationals is supposed to be hard. That is certainly the case in Junior tennis as well as USTA League.
It would also drive more participation to regional Level 2 and Level 3 tournaments. That would be extremely healthy for the overall senior tennis tournament ecosystem.
In recent years (COVID permitting) Senior and Super Senior Tournaments have introduced Round Robin formats for doubles events. A maximum of four teams per group allows most teams at least three matches. Winners of the groups and, if necessary, the best second placed teams then go through to an elimination draw.
One issue is how the ‘best’ second place teams are selected. If the #1 seeds are in your group, perhaps becoming the best placed #2 pair is going to be difficult… but at least you may not be eliminated in the first round as would probably happen in a normal eliminated draw.
Unfortunately the USTA software has not very helpful at two tournaments, I know of, where it was not possible to add best placed second place teams to the elimination part of the event.
Another issue is ‘Sign-up Consolation’ events where players losing in the main draw are automatically inserted into the consolation event. Often this results in an unbalanced consolation event with one half being heavier than the other. This imbalance is corrected by rearranging the draw manually, but after more losing players are inserted the draw the following day, the online version is sent into chaos by duplication of names. There needs to be a way of switching on automatic or manual insertion of names into any consolation event.
There were issues with the round robin pools when first implemented in Senior Women’s USTA tennis. There was competitive inequity between the pools and some defaults that resulted in a less than positive player experience. I think it is a generally good idea, but it has to be mechanized correctly.