Link to results at Nationals
 

Does anyone have a link to the results for Nationals in AZ for the Mens 4.5 division??

The team from Phoenix area won the 4.5 Mens division.

http://tennislink.usta.com/Leagues/M...A49&CYear=2012

Thanks. How does that work?? Are there 4 different locations for Nationals? Four flights?? Then winners advance??

Nationals are held at one location and at the same time (over mulitple days). Winners of each of the 4 flights advance to semis.

According to the team that went there from my club, the 4.5 semifinals and final were like watching a D1 match.

Do you know how many days it lasts?? i assume Fri-Sun the flights are played off?? Then the four winners of each flight come back the following weekend?? What a commitment it takes if you keep on winning.

I see the draw has the date 10/28 for the semis and finals. I believe that was the following weekend after the flights were played.

Not very user friendly trying to find the individual match results in each flight.

Having watched in person at lot of the players from the team that won, it was not even close to a D1 match. It was high level tennis 5.0+ but it was not like watching Pac12 tennis match (6.0+). Several of the players recently played JC and were nationally ranked and one guy played low level D1. Another guy is on the 2012 roster of a D2 team with good record in singles . Not sure how he was able to rate 4.5.

Once you find the match summary for the flight you want... you can see the individual match results. It took a while to figure it out

Were there any roaming officials to DE-GOATify 5.5 D1 ringers out of 4.5 USTA pen glory?

I heard several 4.0 GOATs from TX were pulled from matches a few years back for destroying mid-tier 3.5s in 3.5 Nationals.

The Craiglist 4.5s would get killed at Nationals. Not sure why they put ads up saying they're 4.5. More like 3.75.

Our captain found one guy had played for Texas A&M.

Nationals are generally Fri-Sun with teams playing 3 or 4 matches (with 17 sections, there are 3 flights with 4 teams and 1 with 5) in their flight on Friday and Saturday with the winners advancing to semis early Sunday with the final a few hours later on Sunday.

I had the pleasure of watching the Mid-Atlantic team (runner-up) play in person and knowing some of their players. The #1 singles player is on George Mason's roster, but is not a regular starter. He is still one of the best 4.5 singles players in the section. The #2 singles player was state runner-up 6 years back in Virginia HS AAA tennis, which is the best in Virginia. One of the best doubles players played for Catawba college which is DII tennis. Everybody else was older and accomplished a lot back in their heyday. Their team had 4 players bumped to 5.0 including the #1 singles players and the DII player.

I'll be playing up to 4.5 this year as a 4.0. Because of that advance and split rule, it'll make things really competitive this year in 4.5.

These guys played 4.5??????
Don't they have any pride?

That's amazing! I'd love to see these teams play in their normal league. They must just clean house on the way to Nationals.

-Fuji

So if these guys are looking for hitting partners on Craigslist do they post as 5.5?

I'm just trying to understand the rating system on USTA/Craigslist because I've been burned lately on Craig's by dudes claiming 5.0 but are like, less than 4.0.

Just need some common ground here.

The team from our district won nationals at 4.5 two years ago. They were an outstanding collection of individuals from the surrounding districts (a franken-team).

In any event, they knew they would make and win local playoffs no matter who they suited up. So the result was that locally they were very cool. They won all of their local matches but you never got the sense that they were sandbagging nor were they trying to kill flees with bazookas.

They just went out, took care of business in a friendly manner and then went home. Generally good guys.

The sad truth 4.5 in our area died out. In large part I heard it was because of this team among other reasons. The recruiting of nationally ranked JC players was a major beef from what I heard. A lot of the other teams left and went to form their own league which was and currently is wildly more successful than the USTA for 4.5+ players. This super team basically played a half baked schedule against one other team (yes there were just 2 teams in the league) just so they had the minimum number of matches. In a sense it was unfair to other teams nationwide because they were able to hide out all their best players in this joke league and just play the bare minimum. If they had to play a full schedule with tough teams, some of their top players likely would have been DQ'ed or grievances filed is my guess.

What an odd situation! I would have never guessed people would be that hellbent on going on to the next level of recreational level competition...

-Fuji