2019 USTA Nationals Review for Men's 40s 4.5+

[Jack the Hack]

It's taken me awhile to recover and put my thoughts together, but I wanted to post a review of my 2019 USTA League Nationals experience this year. Apologies for the randomness and length...

As you can probably guess from my previous posts in the other thread, I was on the PNW team that made it to the 4.5+ finals this year. It was a magical run and one of the best tennis experiences I’ve ever had. Our team was very tight knit and everyone got along. People that I didn’t know very well before this year are like my brothers now. This was everything good that team tennis has to offer and our 2nd place finish at Nationals was the best that any 4.5, 4.5+, or 5.0 men’s team has ever done from Northern Oregon.



For a little background on the team, I first joined this Portland Tennis Center group in 2016 after I got bumped back down to 4.5 from 5.0. We won the local league and made it to the PNW Sectionals that year, but went 1-2 there and I had a massively disappointing result in singles I felt that let the team down. In 2017, I played on a different team, but I watched as Portland Tennis Center had a good year and made it all the way to the PNW Sectional finals before losing. In 2018, with many of the same players, PTC went 5-2 in local league and did not make it to the playoffs. I played for Vancouver Tennis Center last year, and we beat PTC 4-1 when we played them, and then we went on to win the local league and Sectionals to make it to Nationals in Vegas. However, my Vancouver team went 0-4 at Nationals and came in 2nd to last place, only edging out Hawaii from being the worst squad there. Despite this, in December last year, knowing that we had to break up the Vancouver team, the PTC captain invited me back to play for them again.

The original plan was that I was going to be playing some singles and doubles for PTC this year. I played 32 matches last year and won 14 matches, so I was feeling like my game was getting back into gear after some injuries in 2017. However, the PTC captain was clear that our goal was to make it to Nationals, and I knew that we needed more firepower to have a chance. Subsequently, I recruited both of our 4.5 singles players, and two of our top four 4.5 doubles players. Since that was half of our starting lineup, and with two of the other spots going to 5.0s, I knew that if those guys stayed healthy, I would not likely play very much. That turned out to be true. I only played two matches and got a default when one of our opponents didn’t show up for my 3rd match.

Through most of the local season, I felt like our 4.5 spots were solid, but I was worried about our 5.0s. Other teams had a top level 5.0 singles player that could almost guarantee that point, and I didn’t think we had that on our roster. In fact, we had a chance to get one of the local Portland 5.0 singles stars, but the PTC captain was unwilling to part ways with one of the 5.0s he had already had. Ironically, it turned out we had the best 5.0 singles player in the United States for 4.5+ this year already and didn’t know it. His initials are DF, and I’ve worked with him at the same company for several years. We had practiced together before, but he never spoke of his tennis background. All I knew was that he was very solid, but seemed more interested in running in big road races (10k and half marathons) than tennis. He went 1-3 in 5.0 league this year and wasn’t standing out in any way. However, as we prepared for Sectionals, DF volunteered to play singles for us and WOW… he rolled through some of the best players in the Pacific Northwest, hanging bagels in each match as we qualified for Nationals. And at Nationals, he went 3-0, beating two tough players from SoCal and Intermountain, before knocking off the 2019 40s National Grass Court singles champion in straight sets in the semifinals. (As I mentioned before, with the extreme heat and humidity combined with the level of competition in the semis, he ended up being in full body cramps after the semifinal match and couldn’t play the final, so we never got the chance to see if he was better than the Southern singles guy, who was also a stud.) Anyway, I can best describe DF's game in full flight as very similar to Novak Djokovic's style, with ridiculous court coverage, and great transitions from defense to offense. I took over 750 photos at Nationals, and in all of them, DF looks like a professional. We learned that he was one of the top juniors in South Africa, played in the Orange Bowl, was a member of the University of Florida's SEC championship team, and had a top 500 world ranking. Here's a photo of him in action:



Throughout the season and in the time before Nationals, one of the great things about this team is that we had frequent practices together. I was at almost every practice, so even if I didn’t get to play in many matches, I got plenty of sets in with the guys. We had 14 players at Nationals, and it turned out that only 10 got to play. However, the 4 of us who sat out warmed up for every match and were ready to step in at any time if needed. During the matches, we all split our time running around to cheer on each court, scout our upcoming opponents, take pictures, and run bananas and Gatorade out to everyone as needed. We also did our lineups as a group, so everyone had an opportunity to provide input and we were all united on what we were doing. Ordinarily, with a competitive group, there could be some hurt feelings if someone doesn’t get to play (especially if they spent a bunch of money to fly down to Nationals), but none of that happened with this team. We all had an important role, and it was understood that we had each other’s back.

Last year in Vegas, I watched the National Championship match and was awed by the talent level. I never thought that I would ever be a part of a team that could make it that far in the tournament. However, we had just the right mix of people this year and took advantage of a perfect draw. Our lineups against each team were spot on, and we won all of our set and match tiebreakers until the final. The Fast Four format is a total crapshoot, but we played clutch tennis all the way through. We had epic 3rd set breaker performances against SoCal, Intermountain, Middle West, and then MidAtlantic in the semifinals. In that semifinal, the 3rd set breaker that our 4.5 singles player won with the match at 2-2 was nothing short of courageous and heroic. Here are some photos from that moment:



The USTA featured a video of that match on their Twitter account, lauding the drama of a 3rd set breaker at 2-2 in the National semifinal. Ironically, with their stupid new 1 singles/3 doubles format for 40s, it has eliminated that amazing opportunity from happening in the future.

In the end, we had absolutely nothing left when we got to the final, but still gave Southern a decent match. Southern was a very deep and talented team, and they deserved to win the National title, so all congratulations to them. For us, it was an honor and a privilege get as far as we did and to be a part of this.

 

[Jack the Hack]

Here are some of my other related thoughts that I had to break up due to the character count restrictions...


Orlando and the USTA National Campus

Orlando is a vacation destination with a major airport and many options for accommodations, restaurants, and entertainment outside of the tennis. It is possible to make the trip a family vacation around the Nationals tournament, which is what we did. We visited the Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach, Gator Land, Disney World, etc.

The entire team rented a 15 bedroom mansion with a private swimming pool in a gated community. It was awesome to be all together and we had an amazing time. When shared, the cost of the house was less than what a hotel would have been, and it was a lot more fun.

The USTA National Campus is nice, but it is built on a swamp right next to the airport. I imagine the land was as cheap as you can get. Depending on the wind, airplanes will be flying directly over the courts to land and will be less than 1,000 feet above you. It’s loud and distracting. As is common in Florida, there are signs all around Lake Nona warning about poisonous snakes and alligators. I was told by one of the USTA umpires that an alligator had come up out of the lake and made it over to the Collegiate courts the week before we got there.

While there are 100+ courts at the USTA National Campus, I thought the pricing was kind of high. I believe we paid around $40 an hour for a clay court. I’m not sure what the hard courts cost as we divided it up as a team and paid it amongst our portion of the house rent, food, etc. We had two team practices, a one off one-on-one warmup practice for one of our guys that arrived late on Thursday, and a small intra-squad tournament on clay on the Monday afterward for a few players.

During one of the rain delays on Friday, me and a couple other guys from our team wandered into a side door for the indoor courts. We had been told that they were unavailable for the USTA League Nationals but that we might get them late at night if needed, so we wanted to check them out. They seemed like they had good lighting, high ceilings, and plenty of space behind and between courts. We sat in the stands next to Court 1 and watched quietly for a bit. There were a bunch of little kids taking a group lesson on the first court, but Courts 2 and 3 were empty. I believe it was Ci Ci Bellis (WTA Touring Pro) practicing with her coach on Court 4, and there was a big hitting teenage boy working with a coach on Court 5. I don’t recall if someone was on Court 6, but my point is that not all of the facility was being used when we went in there. What dismayed me was that after about 10 minutes, we were approached by a USTA employee who told us that if we didn’t have official business in the indoor courts, we had to leave. We didn’t make a fuss and walked away, but thought that was kind of lame. I guess I understand that they want to make the whole Performance section exclusive to professional players, and they want to keep the riffraff from bothering them. However, I’ve been to many professional tennis tournaments and work with a lot of famous people in my job, and the security in that portion of the USTA National Campus seemed over the top, especially for a public facility.

Weather

The weather was brutally hot and wet the entire time we were there. It rained for most of Friday, and we only got one match completed. It rained off and on most of Saturday, and we had to play back-to-back-to-back matches in 89 degree heat and 95% to 100% humidity using the Fast Four format to reach the semifinals. On Sunday, it was 91 degrees with over 90% humidity. There were numerous players that were having severe cramping and heat related illnesses. We saw at least one player ambulanced away for what I heard was heat stroke. Our top guys were in tremendous shape, but both of our singles players were unable to play after their semifinal wins. I don't know how you can prepare for this type of thing.

I understand that rain is a tournament directors worst nightmare. Trying to reschedule hundreds of matches in real time is crazy, especially not knowing for sure what the weather is going to do next. (Check out former US Open tournament director Brian Early’s interview on Talk Tennis where he discusses this.) I appreciate the USTA officials that we spoke with who took our input and tried their best to accommodate. Communication was really excellent as we were getting frequent updates via text letting us know what was going on. That said, it was really frustrating and there were a lot of very unhappy players at the event. There are only 6 indoor courts at the USTA National Campus, and they were unwilling to open them up for the Nationals until after 7:00 PM on Friday, and late on Saturday night.

Overall, my opinion was that the tournament officials at the main desk in the Team USA court area were high strung and a bit disorganized, probably because that was the central location where the decisions were being made. However, the officials running the Collegiate courts were really nice and seemed on top of everything in their area. In the round robin phase, we had two matches at each location. When it rained, as soon as there was a break, the Collegiate side had towels, squeegees, and blowers going. For our final match, both teams were out drying the courts, and the officials there let us play as soon as we felt they were ready (despite an official text from the tournament director that said play would resume 90 minutes later). The Team USA side was kind of pandemonium.

As I mentioned, the Fast Four format is a total crapshoot and barely resembles tennis. It should not decide a National championship, especially when people have paid thousands of dollars to travel to the site. Personally, I wouldn't pay to play a Fast Four event even if it was at my local tennis club. However, when you have the kind of weather problems we had in Orlando, I don't know what else they could have done at the time. The obvious answer is to put all Nationals events in locations that have both drier weather or adequate amounts of indoor courts, or both.

Also, to note, I thought Vegas was an amazing location for Nationals last year. All of the same accommodation, flight, and entertainment options like Orlando, but perfect weather. And even though it was in the 80s, I don't recall a single player having heat related issues or cramping that I saw.

Sportsmanship and Roving Umpires

First of all, in all 6 of our matches, it seemed like the sportsmanship from all the teams we encountered was excellent. I saw a few tight line calls, but I didn’t see anyone that was cheating or behaving boorishly on the court towards an opponent. Just the opposite, despite it being a competitive pressure environment with frustrating circumstances due to the format and weather, I was very impressed with everyone’s behavior.

In addition, almost all of the roving umpires I interacted with were nice and very professional. I didn’t see any instances where an umpire had to overrule a line call. In one case, a player was throwing his racquet around and cursed, and he got a warning, but it wasn’t extreme and his anger was with himself. There were several cases of foot faults, and the umpires just quietly let the offending player know it was happening in a change over.

That said, I did have one weird umpire interaction. One of our doubles teams was losing the second set and was in danger of going into a 3rd set tiebreaker. I hadn’t been watching most of the match, so I moved down to that court to cheer them on. When I arrived, one of their wives asked me about who calls foot faults. I told her that it would have to be an umpire, and that most of the time, it is weak sauce to be worrying about your opponent foot faulting at the 4.5+ level. However, after watching for a couple minutes, I saw the player that she was concerned about serve out the second set. Every single serve, his front foot would step about 12 to 18 inches inside the court, and then the back foot would come up inside the court about 6 inches when he struck the ball, and he would sprint to the net. In other words, he was a serve and volleyer that was getting a running start, which I thought was clearly an issue. Therefore, I found a roving umpire near one of the other courts and explained the situation. His response was “Are you from the opposite team? If so, I can’t intervene because it would look like favoritism.” What? I told him that the match was in a 3rd set breaker and asked that he please just watch it to make sure nothing goes wrong. He didn’t come right away, but finally showed up near the end of the breaker. I believe the foot faulter guy was about to serve at 7-8 when the umpire stationed himself in view. Immediately, the foot faulter took two steps back from the baseline before his serves, so he clearly knew what he was doing. Anyway, our team ended up winning it 10-8.

 

[Jack the Hack]

And final thoughts...

Additional Notes:

• PlaySight was great… when it was available. We had numerous people back home watching our matches live on Saturday. In fact, one player had his parents in South Africa and sister in Switzerland watching, which I thought was really cool. I had wondered if the USTA was going to let us use it for match statistics and line call reviews, but that was not offered. That said, PlaySight was down for most of Friday, up on Saturday, and then down again during the semifinals and finals. That meant that we couldn't record the semi and finals matches, and our friends and family couldn't watch them from home. I believe that it was network related and that the USTA IT staff was working on it. However, it was never fixed and we overheard that this was a frequent problem, which is a shame.

• In the finals, one of the doubles matches was assigned to court 8 on the Team USA side, which is at the end of the facility and unviewable from the tournament desk area. Court 8 also has windscreens on the back, has court 7 on one side, and the other side is a fenced with the property beyond it being outside of the campus. In other words, there is no spectator viewing available! At the beginning of the match, the maintenance gate behind the court was open, and about 7 or 8 people from both the Southern and PNW teams went outside the campus fencing and set up chairs to watch the match on Court 8. I was there in the beginning but was moving from court to court to check out all of the action. When I returned about 45 minutes later, I saw that the maintenance gate was closed and locked. I saw that all of the people from both teams were still outside Court 8 in the grassy area, and when I caught the attention of one of the wives, she looked bemused and shrugged. Not knowing what was going on, I went upstairs the talk with the tournament director to ask if they could please reopen the maintenance gate. About 10 minutes later, she came up to me with a red face and her hands shaking and said “our maintenance guy was treated very rudely by your group and we will not be unlocking the gate. They were told multiple times that they can’t be out there, but they refused to go.” I apologized and told her that I had no knowledge of this, but wanted to know why a finals match was assigned to that court and how we were supposed to watch it if there was no spectator area. At that point, I noticed that the match had just finished and the group had been let back in by a maintenance worker. I walked down to the group and asked one of the wives what had happened. She said that the maintenance guy had been really rude and became obstinate when she told him that she had flown 2,000 miles to watch her husband play one of the most important matches of his life, and she wasn’t going to move. I understand how her insistence would have come off poorly, but it seemed like the maintenance people lacked awareness of the situation, and the tournament director did not handle it well.

• I believe that the National finals matches should be played on the Collegiate courts. There are 6 courts on either side, with spectator seating above them. This would be ideal for the finals where all of the team could see each others matches, all spectators would have a great view, and you could watch both the men's and women's finals at the same time. Team competitions are exactly why the Collegiate courts were built this way and it was unfortunate they weren't used for the USTA National finals.

• It’s been 4 weeks since Nationals ended, and our Finalist trophies have still not arrived. After the finals, we received our banner and 8 trophies that we randomly handed out. However, we had 14 players at Nationals, and 3 more at home, so there weren’t enough to go around. We were told that the remaining 9 trophies for the other players would be shipped to us, but nothing has shown up yet. First of all, I think it’s very lame that the USTA didn’t have enough trophies for everyone at the tournament, and really lame that they’ve dropped the ball since then. It makes me think they don’t really care about League.

• Speaking of not caring about League, I am super disappointed with the decision to change the format of 40s to be 1 singles and 3 doubles. The effect on 4.5+ is disastrous and ruins the league. There is a whole other thread about this here, but I just don’t understand why the USTA would make such a stupid, uninformed, and unpopular change like this and refuse to listen when people protest. At the very least, I think they could revert 4.5+ to the original 2 singles and 3 doubles format, and do the 1+3 for the other levels. It not like the USTA doesn’t already have different formats for different levels and age groups. I feel so disheartened by this and it seems like the only response the USTA might understand is a boycott of the league… but at the end of the day, I don’t think they care about that either. It seems they are going to do what they want to do no matter what… but I’m thinking about sitting out next year and just playing tournaments (preferably non-USTA ones, if possible).

 

[Jack the Hack]

Another two things I just remembered...

• As usual at Nationals, I tried to watch as many of the other matches as I could and cheer on the women's team from the PNW (I didn't know any of them, but they seems like good people). Anyway, after the tournament was over, I ran into several players from other teams (both men and women) that mentioned that they had been doing the same thing, and had been rooting for our team to win. Apparently, based on the comments, they appreciated our team comradry and good sportsmanship, which made me proud.

• On Saturday night, after having qualified for the semifinals, we opted not to go to the USTA Player Party. We wanted to rest up and get ready for the next day. I'm really glad that we did this because I heard from other players that the USTA party was a complete disaster. It was held at a location about 30 minutes away from the National Campus that was like a Florida version of Dave and Busters, with bowling lanes, video games, etc. That seems OK. However, due to the rain, many of the matches, particularly on the women's side, did not finish until after 10:00 PM on Saturday. The Player Party started at 8:00 PM. From what I was told, only about 20 or 30 people showed up all evening, and the food that was offered was cold hotdogs and soda. They said the atmosphere was terrible and depressing, and they were really unhappy. I didn't witness this firsthand, but it sounds bad. (We had a good time at the Vegas Player Party last year, where the USTA provided a southwest style buffet, music with a DJ, and gave away prizes.)

 

[2ndServe]

Great write up. I'm sure it was a great trip, your 1 singles was amazing, I played on a near court and he legit looked like someone you might see playing on TV in smaller tournaments or qualifying to bigger tournaments, best player I saw all weekend.

But I've legit got major complaints about USTA handing scheduling and courts.

Everyone knew over 2 weeks in advance that place was going to rain. Yet the USTA didn't anticipant the need to use those indoor courts? I think we found out Friday night that they might be able to let the teams use the courts starting at 7 or 8pm. I looked at the weather 15 days in advance and it was for sure going to rain so they should have known themselves and reserved the indoor courts.

Saturday morning we warmed up on courts that weren't being used, in fact 6 of them all in a row. We hit on them for an hour at 9 or 10am and the entire row was not being used. If you are so backed up to force people into playing fast four at least use all the courts.

They need to hold it in a place that doesn't rain. Fast four is a joke format, I heard between semi and finals was almost no turnaround time to rest and basically was played right after. I saw the Southern team for 40 min, I thought they were the best team all weekend (might have been different if you or other teams didn't have to play 3 matches on Sat).

The USTA really lacks a lot of good decision making. They have a big training facility out west in LA that has a 99% chance of not raining and they chose instead to hold it in a place that rains everyday.

 

[Saul Goode]

Pretty comprehensive review of things—thanks for sharing!

 

[Jack the Hack]

The USTA really lacks a lot of good decision making.

Quoted and bolded for truth!

I completely agree with everything you wrote, especially about the site choice, poor scheduling, and the terrible Fast 4 format.

Despite the signage around the facility, I got the impression that they really couldn't have cared less about the USTA Nationals and barely registered that we were there. As you said, knowing that rain was in the forecast, it's unbelievable that they didn't have the indoor courts blocked out for us ahead of time. It made me feel like they were either poorly prepared or didn't view our event as very important (in comparison to catering to the little kids group lessons, juniors, and handful of pros that were using the indoor courts on Friday and Saturday).

I would have loved it if the event was in Carson. Perfect weather and lots to do in SoCal. I dreamed of going to Nationals when it used to be at Indian Wells and was disappointed that they stopped having events there.

As another alternative, if they wanted an East Coast site, I would have been happy to play at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. Not only would we have a chance to play on the US Open courts, but they have a 12 court indoor facility there, plus the covered stadiums. More than enough capacity to handle rain.

 

[Justagamefool]

High end players (pros and pro hopefuls) will always be prioritized over rec players. The 6 indoor courts might as well be IMG Academy. Accommodating a league player, regardless on how much he or she has spent getting to Orlando or on the league program, will never take priority. I'd venture the staff running the tournament is lower on the totem pole than those associated with the elite player amenities.

I concur that the change in the 4.5+ league is a sign that 5.0s are considered somewhat expendable to the health of that particular league.

Surprisingly all leagues haven't been switched to 3 courts. 18 & Over and 40 & Over can have separate singles only and doubles only play. It would be another way to increase participation as no one has solved the mystery of increasing unique players.

 

[mikeler]

I'm not sure if they are still doing it but last year the Campus was allowing you on the red clay courts in the player development area. It was only on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between 6-9 PM. It was $50 for 90 minutes starting at either 6 or 7:30.

 

[2ndServe]

And final thoughts...

Additional Notes:

• PlaySight was great… when it was available. We had numerous people back home watching our matches live on Saturday. In fact, one player had his parents in South Africa and sister in Switzerland watching, which I thought was really cool. I had wondered if the USTA was going to let us use it for match statistics and line call reviews, but that was not offered. That said, PlaySight was down for most of Friday, up on Saturday, and then down again during the semifinals and finals. That meant that we couldn't record the semi and finals matches, and our friends and family couldn't watch them from home. I believe that it was network related and that the USTA IT staff was working on it. However, it was never fixed and we overheard that this was a frequent problem, which is a shame.

• In the finals, one of the doubles matches was assigned to court 8 on the Team USA side, which is at the end of the facility and unviewable from the tournament desk area. Court 8 also has windscreens on the back, has court 7 on one side, and the other side is a fenced with the property beyond it being outside of the campus. In other words, there is no spectator viewing available! At the beginning of the match, the maintenance gate behind the court was open, and about 7 or 8 people from both the Southern and PNW teams went outside the campus fencing and set up chairs to watch the match on Court 8. I was there in the beginning but was moving from court to court to check out all of the action. When I returned about 45 minutes later, I saw that the maintenance gate was closed and locked. I saw that all of the people from both teams were still outside Court 8 in the grassy area, and when I caught the attention of one of the wives, she looked bemused and shrugged. Not knowing what was going on, I went upstairs the talk with the tournament director to ask if they could please reopen the maintenance gate. About 10 minutes later, she came up to me with a red face and her hands shaking and said “our maintenance guy was treated very rudely by your group and we will not be unlocking the gate. They were told multiple times that they can’t be out there, but they refused to go.” I apologized and told her that I had no knowledge of this, but wanted to know why a finals match was assigned to that court and how we were supposed to watch it if there was no spectator area. At that point, I noticed that the match had just finished and the group had been let back in by a maintenance worker. I walked down to the group and asked one of the wives what had happened. She said that the maintenance guy had been really rude and became obstinate when she told him that she had flown 2,000 miles to watch her husband play one of the most important matches of his life, and she wasn’t going to move. I understand how her insistence would have come off poorly, but it seemed like the maintenance people lacked awareness of the situation, and the tournament director did not handle it well.

• I believe that the National finals matches should be played on the Collegiate courts. There are 6 courts on either side, with spectator seating above them. This would be ideal for the finals where all of the team could see each others matches, all spectators would have a great view, and you could watch both the men's and women's finals at the same time. Team competitions are exactly why the Collegiate courts were built this way and it was unfortunate they weren't used for the USTA National finals.

• It’s been 4 weeks since Nationals ended, and our Finalist trophies have still not arrived. After the finals, we received our banner and 8 trophies that we randomly handed out. However, we had 14 players at Nationals, and 3 more at home, so there weren’t enough to go around. We were told that the remaining 9 trophies for the other players would be shipped to us, but nothing has shown up yet. First of all, I think it’s very lame that the USTA didn’t have enough trophies for everyone at the tournament, and really lame that they’ve dropped the ball since then. It makes me think they don’t really care about League.

• Speaking of not caring about League, I am super disappointed with the decision to change the format of 40s to be 1 singles and 3 doubles. The effect on 4.5+ is disastrous and ruins the league. There is a whole other thread about this here, but I just don’t understand why the USTA would make such a stupid, uninformed, and unpopular change like this and refuse to listen when people protest. At the very least, I think they could revert 4.5+ to the original 2 singles and 3 doubles format, and do the 1+3 for the other levels. It not like the USTA doesn’t already have different formats for different levels and age groups. I feel so disheartened by this and it seems like the only response the USTA might understand is a boycott of the league… but at the end of the day, I don’t think they care about that either. It seems they are going to do what they want to do no matter what… but I’m thinking about sitting out next year and just playing tournaments (preferably non-USTA ones, if possible).

You could write a novel about USTA incompetence. I used to think the USTA wants each match to use less courts and take less and less time each year. But with each rule change I know for a fact that's what they want. It's like any bad seller, once they get your money they don't actually care if they provide a good service or experience. I'd totally be down for a boycott, be better off with a TTforums league, it would be cheaper and probably more fun but you miss out on the big team camraderie and those 2-2 ties everyone cheering for that final line like you had in the semis.

 

[Jack the Hack]

You could write a novel about USTA incompetence. I used to think the USTA wants each match to use less courts and take less and less time each year. But with each rule change I know for a fact that's what they want. It's like any bad seller, once they get your money they don't actually care if they provide a good service or experience. I'd totally be down for a boycott, be better off with a TTforums league, it would be cheaper and probably more fun but you miss out on the big team camraderie and those 2-2 ties everyone cheering for that final line like you had in the semis.

You are 100% correct. With no viable competition, the USTA is free to devalue the League product as much as they want with little consequence. That said, a couple weeks ago, I spent a couple hours thinking about how I could possibly start an alternate 4.5+ league, either just within the PNW, or somehow networked with other areas. It's probably possible to even organize a week long Nationals tournament of our own in a location like Las Vegas or Indian Wells, maybe in late September. The PNW used to have a "Team Cup Challenge" over in the Sunriver/Bend area (a resort destination in the mountains) that was non-USTA and fairly popular. However, I am in the midst of an MBA program, working full time, and have a family with a busy teen in high school, so it's not like I have a bunch of extra time on my hands to pull it all together for a tennis protest. It's much easier for me to just sit out of the League for a year or two as a boycott... and get my kicks in tournaments or just hitting with my buddies when I can.

 

[Jack the Hack]

I'm not sure if they are still doing it but last year the Campus was allowing you on the red clay courts in the player development area. It was only on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between 6-9 PM. It was $50 for 90 minutes starting at either 6 or 7:30.

I inquired about the red clay courts, but was told that they were off limits.

 

[Jack the Hack]

High end players (pros and pro hopefuls) will always be prioritized over rec players. The 6 indoor courts might as well be IMG Academy. Accommodating a league player, regardless on how much he or she has spent getting to Orlando or on the league program, will never take priority. I'd venture the staff running the tournament is lower on the totem pole than those associated with the elite player amenities.

It sucks, but you are right. That said, there are over 300,000 USTA League players paying an average of $30 per league fee per team. That's $9,000,000 per year and most people play on multiple teams (I was on 5 different teams this year, and it was a light year), so I bet their USTA League revenue is well north of $30 million, and that doesn't include any of the additional fees and costs for playing. The entry fee for Nationals was $55 per person, which means that they were pulling in about $22,000 just for that one 4.5+ weekend. The elite player programs are an expense that is paid for through the USTA membership, USTA League, and US Open revenues. So... you'd think that they'd be willing to give up those indoor courts for 2 days to accommodate us.

 

[jered]

Thanks for the write-up @Jack the Hack! I work with one of your teammates and it’s amazing how far you all got. He said it was a tough loss at the end but was such a great experience just to make it that far.

Way to represent the PNW and PTC!

 

[CHtennis]

Excellent write up, it is always great to read a recap of a nationals event. Good criticisms as well that I wish the USTA would consider.

One question, how does making the lineup with the group go? I have done that once in a playoff run and it worked well there but doesnt everyone need to be on the same page with which players are the best. I have had some players on recent teams that had vastly different opinions on player skill and it would have made that difficult. Anyways just wondering how that gets initiated and implemented.

 

[Jack the Hack]

Excellent write up, it is always great to read a recap of a nationals event. Good criticisms as well that I wish the USTA would consider.

One question, how does making the lineup with the group go? I have done that once in a playoff run and it worked well there but doesnt everyone need to be on the same page with which players are the best. I have had some players on recent teams that had vastly different opinions on player skill and it would have made that difficult. Anyways just wondering how that gets initiated and implemented.

I bolded the key part in your inquiry. Yes, everybody on the team has to have a clear understanding of who the top 8 to 10 players are, and the guys that are outside of that group have to be humble enough to know where they stand and be willing to sacrifice for the good of the team.

In our case, our top 10 became very well established through League results, Sectionals, our near weekly practices, and even a doubles tournament most of us played in. After Sectionals, it was 100% clear who our singles players were, and who our best doubles teams were. We had four 4.5 doubles players that were ahead of everyone else, and almost interchangeable in terms of who partnered with who. As long as all 4 of those guys were healthy and available, that meant the only questions would be which 4.5 would partner with the 5.0 at #1 doubles, and who would step in to play doubles in the cases where we had to move one of those top 4.5 doubles guys into #2 singles to give our top 4.5 singles guy a rest. We also had to be strategic about when to swap in a different 5.0 into #1 singles to give our superstar a rest.

Ahead of Nationals, I had done a pretty exhaustive analysis of the 4 teams that we had drawn in the round robin play. (I even reached out to @schmke for some confirmation on it, and a big thank you for his responses.) From what I had determined, it appeared that we had at least an equal chance of winning all 4 matches as long as we got the right matchups and played well. This gave us belief that we could make it to the semifinals and we went to Nationals with the idea that we could potentially win it. (Belief in that goal was a unifier for us.) We also saw that there were two opponents that often put a 4.5 player at the #1 singles position, and doubled up their 5.0s. This gave us an idea of when we might be able to sit out our top 5.0 singles player. As it turned out, the analysis was spot on, and we got the line-up matchups we wanted throughout the round robin, and luckily in the semifinal as well.

I should mention that there were 5 of us on the team that have been successful USTA League captains previously, and I believe that all of us have a participative/democratic style of leadership where we openly solicit feedback and encourage our team to be a part of the decision making process. When we did the group lineups, we huddled everyone together and discussed the opponent we were about to play, how everyone was feeling from a health and confidence perspective, and who we thought were the best people to play in each spot in order for us to get the win. For the reasons I mentioned previously, this was pretty straightforward for the most part because our top 10 was established. Before one of our Sectionals matches, there was disagreement about which 5.0 should play doubles, but one of them deferred to the other. He was unhappy with how insistent the other 5.0 had been in selling himself, but ultimately, that was smoothed over as the team won. I can't recall any other issues the entire season.

The 4 of us that didn't end up playing at Nationals did not go down to Orlando with the intent that we wouldn't be playing, and we certainly don't suck. One guy was the #1 player at a D1 school, his sister was a WTA pro, and his grandfather was a Grand Slam doubles champion, so he certainly has a lot of pride in his game. I've been a 5.0 and formerly been ranked #1 in the PNW in my age group and NTRP category. Our captain puts up a .500 record or better consistently every year in League. And the fourth guy that is supposedly the worst player on our team (based on Tennis Record which has him in the 4.0 range) is very tall, fast, has great hands, a big serve, and a strong forehand... and he beat one of our 5.0s in singles in straight sets in practice just a couple weeks before Nationals. Therefore, we were all worthy of playing time. However, from a personality standpoint, all of us are unselfish and we were united that winning as a team was the most important thing. None of us wanted to screw it up. We all knew that as long as our top 10 guys stayed healthy, we might not play. Of course, it helps that our teammates verbally acknowleged our sacrifice and told us that we had been very helpful with our cheering, scouting, and overall attitude, even buying us a round of drinks a couple times in the after match dinners.

The analogy that I shared with those guys was that on every NCAA championship basketball team, there are guys at the end of the bench that were likely the best high school player in their state before coming to college. They could have played somewhere else and might have been a starter at a school that has no chance of ever playing in the NCAA tournament. But for their sacrifice, they get to be a part of a championship team, which is an incredible honor. That's how I feel about being a part of this team, and I know the others agree.

 

[ChaelAZ]

... it is weak sauce to be worrying about your opponent foot faulting at the 4.5+ level. However, after watching for a couple minutes, I saw the player that she was concerned about serve out the second set. Every single serve, his front foot would step about 12 to 18 inches inside the court, and then the back foot would come up inside the court about 6 inches when he struck the ball, and he would sprint to the net.

I got to watch a few various finals in Surprise as usual this year, and I was floored at just how much foot faulting there was across all levels and teams. Like it isn't even a consideration? I think someone had a thread about this as well. Even at higher levels, where you would think no one would be consistently faulting.

 

[Jack the Hack]

I got to watch a few various finals in Surprise as usual this year, and I was floored at just how much foot faulting there was across all levels and teams. Like it isn't even a consideration? I think someone had a thread about this as well. Even at higher levels, where you would think no one would be consistently faulting.

Well, even the professionals foot fault sometimes, so I see it as a common part of the game. Usually, it doesn't give anyone an advantage if their toe goes over the line a bit, so I don't worry about it. I certainly am not going to react like this:

That said, the particular player I mentioned was definitely getting an advantage out of the foot fault with his blatant running start to the net, so had to say something to an official. And I believe he knew exactly what he was doing because he immediately backed up a couple feet behind the baseline before serving when he saw the USTA umpire show up.

 

[Jack the Hack]

I wrote previously: "The USTA National Campus is nice, but it is built on a swamp right next to the airport. I imagine the land was as cheap as you can get. Depending on the wind, airplanes will be flying directly over the courts to land and will be less than 1,000 feet above you. It’s loud and distracting. As is common in Florida, there are signs all around Lake Nona warning about poisonous snakes and alligators. I was told by one of the USTA umpires that an alligator had come up out of the lake and made it over to the Collegiate courts the week before we got there."

So, as I was trying to research tonight to figure out what the annual revenue of the USTA League is, I found a nugget related to the USTA National Campus in Orlando. If you look on page 26 of the document linked below, it says that the USTA signed a 30 year lease for those 64 acres that the National Campus was built on for a cost of $1 per year. So yeah, it really was swampland that was a cheap as you can get...

https://www.usta.com/content/dam/usta/pdfs/20171129_USTA.Consolidated.Financial.Statements_Final%202016.pdf

 

[tennis tom]

Going to Nationals is the highest level of league level participation play, I'm rather shocked that players who have achieved this level are not accorded better treatment at the national center that USTA members paid annual USTA dues and team fees to build and participate at. Juniors and collegiate players taking precedence over court assignment seems insulting to the "dues-paying citizenry" that is the foundation of the USTA's income. Not putting a finals match into a center court where it can be viewed by team members, friends, family and other spectators seems doubly weird--someone at USTA wasn't thinking. Why would any league player want to break their butts competing through the many many matches it takes to get to nationals, and the expense of traveling there, for this kind of second class treatment? Might as well stay home next time play on a club or rec center ladder for free, or play in a local age-group tournament dedicated to respecting the players.

 

[JLyon]

Going to Nationals is the highest level of league level participation play, I'm rather shocked that players who have achieved this level are not accorded better treatment at the national center that USTA members paid annual USTA dues and team fees to build and participate at. Juniors and collegiate players taking precedence over court assignment seems insulting to the "dues-paying citizenry" that is the foundation of the USTA's income. Not putting a finals match into a center court where it can be viewed by team members, friends, family and other spectators seems doubly weird--someone at USTA wasn't thinking. Why would any league player want to break their butts competing through the many many matches it takes to get to nationals, and the expense of traveling there, for this kind of second class treatment? Might as well stay home next time play on a club or rec center ladder for free, or play in a local age-group tournament dedicated to respecting the players.

I am wondering if UCF controls the Collegiate Courts via a contract with USTA?

 

[winchestervatennis]

Well, even the professionals foot fault sometimes, so I see it as a common part of the game. Usually, it doesn't give anyone an advantage if their toe goes over the line a bit, so I don't worry about it. I certainly am not going to react like this:

That said, the particular player I mentioned was definitely getting an advantage out of the foot fault with his blatant running start to the net, so had to say something to an official. And I believe he knew exactly what he was doing because he immediately backed up a couple feet behind the baseline before serving when he saw the USTA umpire show up.

It was a league game

 

[Saul Goode]

It was a league game

Stay in your lane, Donnie!

 

[Jack the Hack]

I am wondering if UCF controls the Collegiate Courts via a contract with USTA?

It wasn't a matter of the Collegiate Courts being unavailable. They were used for both the round robin on Friday and Saturday, and also for the 3rd place/4th place matches on Sunday. What I'm suggesting is that Collegiate Courts would have been more appropriate for the the championship finals than the consolation matches. Or just use any of the other courts on the Team USA side except Court 8, which has no spectator viewing. In fact, if they had just shifted the matches over by one and used Courts 3 through 7 instead of 4 through 8, or had not made a stink about people actually wanting to watch their family members from the grassy area beyond the Court 8 fence, there wouldn't have been a problem. (Court 3 was wide open, BTW.)

As @tennis tom eloquently said...

Going to Nationals is the highest level of league level participation play, I'm rather shocked that players who have achieved this level are not accorded better treatment at the national center that USTA members paid annual USTA dues and team fees to build and participate at. Juniors and collegiate players taking precedence over court assignment seems insulting to the "dues-paying citizenry" that is the foundation of the USTA's income. Not putting a finals match into a center court where it can be viewed by team members, friends, family and other spectators seems doubly weird--someone at USTA wasn't thinking. Why would any league player want to break their butts competing through the many many matches it takes to get to nationals, and the expense of traveling there, for this kind of second class treatment? Might as well stay home next time play on a club or rec center ladder for free, or play in a local age-group tournament dedicated to respecting the players.

 

[Nostradamus]

It's taken me awhile to recover and put my thoughts together, but I wanted to post a review of my 2019 USTA League Nationals experience this year. Apologies for the randomness and length...

As you can probably guess from my previous posts in the other thread, I was on the PNW team that made it to the 4.5+ finals this year. It was a magical run and one of the best tennis experiences I’ve ever had. Our team was very tight knit and everyone got along. People that I didn’t know very well before this year are like my brothers now. This was everything good that team tennis has to offer and our 2nd place finish at Nationals was the best that any 4.5, 4.5+, or 5.0 men’s team has ever done from Northern Oregon.



For a little background on the team, I first joined this Portland Tennis Center group in 2016 after I got bumped back down to 4.5 from 5.0. We won the local league and made it to the PNW Sectionals that year, but went 1-2 there and I had a massively disappointing result in singles I felt that let the team down. In 2017, I played on a different team, but I watched as Portland Tennis Center had a good year and made it all the way to the PNW Sectional finals before losing. In 2018, with many of the same players, PTC went 5-2 in local league and did not make it to the playoffs. I played for Vancouver Tennis Center last year, and we beat PTC 4-1 when we played them, and then we went on to win the local league and Sectionals to make it to Nationals in Vegas. However, my Vancouver team went 0-4 at Nationals and came in 2nd to last place, only edging out Hawaii from being the worst squad there. Despite this, in December last year, knowing that we had to break up the Vancouver team, the PTC captain invited me back to play for them again.

The original plan was that I was going to be playing some singles and doubles for PTC this year. I played 32 matches last year and won 14 matches, so I was feeling like my game was getting back into gear after some injuries in 2017. However, the PTC captain was clear that our goal was to make it to Nationals, and I knew that we needed more firepower to have a chance. Subsequently, I recruited both of our 4.5 singles players, and two of our top four 4.5 doubles players. Since that was half of our starting lineup, and with two of the other spots going to 5.0s, I knew that if those guys stayed healthy, I would not likely play very much. That turned out to be true. I only played two matches and got a default when one of our opponents didn’t show up for my 3rd match.

Through most of the local season, I felt like our 4.5 spots were solid, but I was worried about our 5.0s. Other teams had a top level 5.0 singles player that could almost guarantee that point, and I didn’t think we had that on our roster. In fact, we had a chance to get one of the local Portland 5.0 singles stars, but the PTC captain was unwilling to part ways with one of the 5.0s he had already had. Ironically, it turned out we had the best 5.0 singles player in the United States for 4.5+ this year already and didn’t know it. His initials are DF, and I’ve worked with him at the same company for several years. We had practiced together before, but he never spoke of his tennis background. All I knew was that he was very solid, but seemed more interested in running in big road races (10k and half marathons) than tennis. He went 1-3 in 5.0 league this year and wasn’t standing out in any way. However, as we prepared for Sectionals, DF volunteered to play singles for us and WOW… he rolled through some of the best players in the Pacific Northwest, hanging bagels in each match as we qualified for Nationals. And at Nationals, he went 3-0, beating two tough players from SoCal and Intermountain, before knocking off the 2019 40s National Grass Court singles champion in straight sets in the semifinals. (As I mentioned before, with the extreme heat and humidity combined with the level of competition in the semis, he ended up being in full body cramps after the semifinal match and couldn’t play the final, so we never got the chance to see if he was better than the Southern singles guy, who was also a stud.) Anyway, I can best describe DF's game in full flight as very similar to Novak Djokovic's style, with ridiculous court coverage, and great transitions from defense to offense. I took over 750 photos at Nationals, and in all of them, DF looks like a professional. We learned that he was one of the top juniors in South Africa, played in the Orange Bowl, was a member of the University of Florida's SEC championship team, and had a top 500 world ranking. Here's a photo of him in action:



Throughout the season and in the time before Nationals, one of the great things about this team is that we had frequent practices together. I was at almost every practice, so even if I didn’t get to play in many matches, I got plenty of sets in with the guys. We had 14 players at Nationals, and it turned out that only 10 got to play. However, the 4 of us who sat out warmed up for every match and were ready to step in at any time if needed. During the matches, we all split our time running around to cheer on each court, scout our upcoming opponents, take pictures, and run bananas and Gatorade out to everyone as needed. We also did our lineups as a group, so everyone had an opportunity to provide input and we were all united on what we were doing. Ordinarily, with a competitive group, there could be some hurt feelings if someone doesn’t get to play (especially if they spent a bunch of money to fly down to Nationals), but none of that happened with this team. We all had an important role, and it was understood that we had each other’s back.

Last year in Vegas, I watched the National Championship match and was awed by the talent level. I never thought that I would ever be a part of a team that could make it that far in the tournament. However, we had just the right mix of people this year and took advantage of a perfect draw. Our lineups against each team were spot on, and we won all of our set and match tiebreakers until the final. The Fast Four format is a total crapshoot, but we played clutch tennis all the way through. We had epic 3rd set breaker performances against SoCal, Intermountain, Middle West, and then MidAtlantic in the semifinals. In that semifinal, the 3rd set breaker that our 4.5 singles player won with the match at 2-2 was nothing short of courageous and heroic. Here are some photos from that moment:



The USTA featured a video of that match on their Twitter account, lauding the drama of a 3rd set breaker at 2-2 in the National semifinal. Ironically, with their stupid new 1 singles/3 doubles format for 40s, it has eliminated that amazing opportunity from happening in the future.

In the end, we had absolutely nothing left when we got to the final, but still gave Southern a decent match. Southern was a very deep and talented team, and they deserved to win the National title, so all congratulations to them. For us, it was an honor and a privilege get as far as we did and to be a part of this.

Post some pictures of you trophys ,, Bagtags,, and other Prizes like T-shirts and towels. What else did you get ?

 

[texacali]

Great read and analysis. I was very fortunate to play a nationals this year. Before that, my only other experience with championships was one sectional. One of my teammates went to a mixed nationals in Orlando and said play conditions were not great....especially the heavy moisture. If I never play another nationals, I at least got the pleasure in my first ever match to play the stadium court in Surprise. I played 6.0, so being in a lower rated category and being able to do this was very memorable. My partner and I did not make fools of ourselves, and we won that match.

 

[JLyon]

It wasn't a matter of the Collegiate Courts being unavailable. They were used for both the round robin on Friday and Saturday, and also for the 3rd place/4th place matches on Sunday. What I'm suggesting is that Collegiate Courts would have been more appropriate for the the championship finals than the consolation matches. Or just use any of the other courts on the Team USA side except Court 8, which has no spectator viewing. In fact, if they had just shifted the matches over by one and used Courts 3 through 7 instead of 4 through 8, or had not made a stink about people actually wanting to watch their family members from the grassy area beyond the Court 8 fence, there wouldn't have been a problem. (Court 3 was wide open, BTW.)

As @tennis tom eloquently said...

good points, simple logistics would make it more enjoyable for the players and onlookers. It is a national championship, so treat it like one.

 

[tennis tom]

Maybe what they need at the Lake Nona (sp) national center is an airport-style control tower to better supervise court traffic! They have about 100 courts--quantity doesn't necessarily equate to quality. It sounds like an "unsupervised club"--they may need court supervisors roaming around in golf-carts or on Segue's supervising what's going on in the back 40's.

(rant begins here) :
The fact that there are NO grass courts is telling about USTA's aspirations to win at Wimby--ONLY the MOST prestigious tournament in tennis that every player dreams and articulates winning--can't grow the "proper type of grass" in FL.. Wimby grounds plays around with their grass mix, and is experimenting with mixing in artificial grass with the real stuff where it becomes dirt after the first week--sort of a Bosley weave.

What tennis needs and many threads at the forums point out, is someone with the guts to supervise play to call and cull out the bad actors, who destroy fair play and create tension on the courts, instead of relieving tension as recreating should do. These supervisors need to also have the backing and support of club management when they may pull aside a repeat offender and give 'em a little talking to regarding "The Code"--otherwise the inmates are running the asylum as has been said. If there's an alligator or copperhead snake heading towards my court I want to be able to call someone to turn it into a nice tennis bag. (end of rant, apologies for the digression, blame it on the Peete's Major Dick's coffee).

 

[mikeler]

I wrote previously: "The USTA National Campus is nice, but it is built on a swamp right next to the airport. I imagine the land was as cheap as you can get. Depending on the wind, airplanes will be flying directly over the courts to land and will be less than 1,000 feet above you. It’s loud and distracting. As is common in Florida, there are signs all around Lake Nona warning about poisonous snakes and alligators. I was told by one of the USTA umpires that an alligator had come up out of the lake and made it over to the Collegiate courts the week before we got there."

So, as I was trying to research tonight to figure out what the annual revenue of the USTA League is, I found a nugget related to the USTA National Campus in Orlando. If you look on page 26 of the document linked below, it says that the USTA signed a 30 year lease for those 64 acres that the National Campus was built on for a cost of $1 per year. So yeah, it really was swampland that was a cheap as you can get...

https://www.usta.com/content/dam/usta/pdfs/20171129_USTA.Consolidated.Financial.Statements_Final%202016.pdf

Well not many people would be interested in living there right under the flight path of Orlando International airport. I still don't think it makes money but probably comes close enough that they justify it by making up for it with promoting tennis.

 

[mikeler]

I am wondering if UCF controls the Collegiate Courts via a contract with USTA?

That is UCF's home court but they have plenty of college matches there with other colleges. The NCAA finals was there this past spring. It's a great environment watching tennis there. Having the ability to watch all 6 courts is like being at a sports bar on an NFL Sunday.

 

[Jack the Hack]

Post some pictures of you trophys ,, Bagtags,, and other Prizes like T-shirts and towels. What else did you get ?

This is the t-shirt, towel, and bag tag that everyone got at Nationals this year. On the left side of this picture is also the metal bag tag we got for winning Sectionals. We got a bag tag for winning the local league as well, but they didn't have enough for everyone at that tournament, and I don't think that I ever picked up one later. (Not sure what the deal is with bag tags, but I've got about 6 of them from various USTA things over the past couple years. I don't have that many bags.)



Since the USTA has failed to send us the rest of our finalist trophies yet, I don't have one at my house. It's been almost 5 weeks since Nationals ended, and I'm starting to believe that they won't be sending them at all. I've reached out to both the National USTA office and our local PNW Section coordinator, but nobody knows what happened to them. That said, I did take a picture of one of the 8 trophies that they gave us in Orlando:

 

[Nostradamus]

This is the t-shirt, towel, and bag tag that everyone got at Nationals this year. On the left side of this picture is also the metal bag tag we got for winning Sectionals. We got a bag tag for winning the local league as well, but they didn't have enough for everyone at that tournament, and I don't think that I ever picked up one later. (Not sure what the deal is with bag tags, but I've got about 6 of them from various USTA things over the past couple years. I don't have that many bags.)



Since the USTA has failed to send us the rest of our finalist trophies yet, I don't have one at my house. It's been almost 5 weeks since Nationals ended, and I'm starting to believe that they won't be sending them at all. I've reached out to both the National USTA office and our local PNW Section coordinator, but nobody knows what happened to them. That said, I did take a picture of one of the 8 trophies that they gave us in Orlando:

Wow, these are truly impressive... what's up with bagtags ? I have few of those myself. What I do with them is I put all of them on my bag. and as I walk onto the court, I flash them and make sure our opponents see them. It is a huge intimidation factor. You are up few games even before the match starts. It is like when a player sees Roger Federer coming onto the court to play against them, he is already up a break before the match even starts.

 

[Saul Goode]

Wow, these are truly impressive... what's up with bagtags ? I have few of those myself. What I do with them is I put all of them on my bag. and as I walk onto the court, I flash them and make sure our opponents see them. It is a huge intimidation factor. You are up few games even before the match starts. It is like when a player sees Roger Federer coming onto the court to play against them, he is already up a break before the match even starts.

Do tell

 

[Nostradamus]

This is the t-shirt, towel, and bag tag that everyone got at Nationals this year. On the left side of this picture is also the metal bag tag we got for winning Sectionals. We got a bag tag for winning the local league as well, but they didn't have enough for everyone at that tournament, and I don't think that I ever picked up one later. (Not sure what the deal is with bag tags, but I've got about 6 of them from various USTA things over the past couple years. I don't have that many bags.)



Since the USTA has failed to send us the rest of our finalist trophies yet, I don't have one at my house. It's been almost 5 weeks since Nationals ended, and I'm starting to believe that they won't be sending them at all. I've reached out to both the National USTA office and our local PNW Section coordinator, but nobody knows what happened to them. That said, I did take a picture of one of the 8 trophies that they gave us in Orlando:

Also that T-shirt look so awesome. It is Adidas WOW. that means you can actually wear it...….LOL. but would you wear it though... or just keep it as part of memory that will last forever and you can tell your grand children about..

 

[sam_p]

This is the t-shirt, towel, and bag tag that everyone got at Nationals this year. On the left side of this picture is also the metal bag tag we got for winning Sectionals. We got a bag tag for winning the local league as well, but they didn't have enough for everyone at that tournament, and I don't think that I ever picked up one later. (Not sure what the deal is with bag tags, but I've got about 6 of them from various USTA things over the past couple years. I don't have that many bags.)



Since the USTA has failed to send us the rest of our finalist trophies yet, I don't have one at my house. It's been almost 5 weeks since Nationals ended, and I'm starting to believe that they won't be sending them at all. I've reached out to both the National USTA office and our local PNW Section coordinator, but nobody knows what happened to them. That said, I did take a picture of one of the 8 trophies that they gave us in Orlando:

They gave out vibration dampeners too!

 

[Jack the Hack]

They gave out vibration dampeners too!

Oh yeah! I totally forgot about those. I have a pocket in my racquet bag where I put random dampeners, and had thrown it in there as soon as I got it.

 

[Jack the Hack]

Also that T-shirt look so awesome. It is Adidas WOW. that means you can actually wear it...….LOL. but would you wear it though... or just keep it as part of memory that will last forever and you can tell your grand children about..

I probably will never wear it precisely because of the Adi logo.

Being from the PNW, I live in Nike country.

 

[schmke]

I probably will never wear it precisely because of the Adi logo.

Being from the PNW, I live in Nike country.

You know, Adidas' headquarters in the US are in Portland too! :O

 

[2ndServe]

That racket dampener was the best part of my rain filled nationals. Maybe you need a banana or another dampener next to it for scale but this one is extra wide and sturdy it hasn't fallen out yet.

 

[Jack the Hack]

The new ratings just posted. Our PNW team had both of our 4.5 singles players and the pair that formed our best 4.5 doubles team bumped to 5.0, but just 4 guys moved up overall. All three of our 5.0s stayed where they were, including our singles star. By rule, we still have to break up the team for 2020 anyways, but I was kinda' expecting more carnage after making the Nationals final.

In contrast, the Southern team that we lost to in the National Championship match had 10 of their 4.5s bumped up to 5.0 and all 3 of their 5.0s bumped to 5.5. There are only 2 guys that stayed 4.5 on their roster.

The MidAtlantic team we beat in the semifinals had 6 of their 4.5s bumped to 5.0 and their 5.0 single star (who our guy beat in straight sets) was bumped to 5.5.

The way I interpret this is that we overachieved.

 

[schmke]

The way I interpret this is that we overachieved.

Or the USTA decided they'd punished PNW enough from a few years ago with adjustments up, and decided to do it to other sections this year.

 

[Jack the Hack]

Or the USTA decided they'd punished PNW enough from a few years ago with adjustments up, and decided to do it to other sections this year.

Yeah, 2014 was brutal. My 18s 4.5 team that year had 11 of the 12 of us that played at Sectionals bumped to 5.0, and we didn't even win our local league. We just got lucky to get the wildcard that year when they were still rotating it around. It was pretty hard to swallow having our team blown up like that when we didn't win local league and didn't get to the Sectional final, and almost all of us were over 40. But the Seattle team that won Sectionals that year also won Nationals, and I think the PNW did really well at all the other levels as well, so I guess it was justified.

6 years on, I don't think the 4.5 level has ever really recovered to where it was, especially in NWW and SWW, which were areas that used to dominate the PNW. Several of my guys that got bumped to 5.0 back then couldn't win a match at that level and ended up quitting League tennis altogether. What happened with the PTC group in 4.5+ this year was kind of a miracle.

 

[Shankadelic]

My 4.5+ team took a beating, seven 4.5s (out of 15) were bumped. We won locals, runner up at State, received a WC to Southerns where we didn't make it out of the subflight. Seems like Southern is this year version of PNW from a few years ago.

 

[Jack the Hack]

For people that have made a USTA League Nationals semifinal or better in the past, how long did it take for the USTA to send you the trophies for the rest of your team?

As I mentioned previously, after the finals, we were given our banner and 8 crystal finalist trophies that we handed out on the spot. But we have 17 players on the team, and the USTA said that they would be mailing the rest of the trophies to us. However, Nationals was over 5 weeks ago, and we haven't seen anything. I contacted our Section coordinator and got a name for someone at Nationals to contact, who I emailed this afternoon. However, I just wondered if this was "normal" for the USTA?

 

[CHtennis]

For people that have made a USTA League Nationals semifinal or better in the past, how long did it take for the USTA to send you the trophies for the rest of your team?

As I mentioned previously, after the finals, we were given our banner and 8 crystal finalist trophies that we handed out on the spot. But we have 17 players on the team, and the USTA said that they would be mailing the rest of the trophies to us. However, Nationals was over 5 weeks ago, and we haven't seen anything. I contacted our Section coordinator and got a name for someone at Nationals to contact, who I emailed this afternoon. However, I just wondered if this was "normal" for the USTA?

When we placed in 2010 the extra trophies took a long time. I believe they arrived 2 months later, that is a long time ago though.

 

[J011yroger]

For people that have made a USTA League Nationals semifinal or better in the past, how long did it take for the USTA to send you the trophies for the rest of your team?

As I mentioned previously, after the finals, we were given our banner and 8 crystal finalist trophies that we handed out on the spot. But we have 17 players on the team, and the USTA said that they would be mailing the rest of the trophies to us. However, Nationals was over 5 weeks ago, and we haven't seen anything. I contacted our Section coordinator and got a name for someone at Nationals to contact, who I emailed this afternoon. However, I just wondered if this was "normal" for the USTA?

I can't answer your question but I can add to the USTA d-baggery.

When we won sectionals we got 8 trophies with the option to buy more for the rest of the team.

J

 

[Saul Goode]

I can't answer your question but I can add to the USTA d-baggery.

When we won sectionals we got 8 trophies with the option to buy more for the rest of the team.

J

Only 8 played the final—coffee is for closers!

 

[toottoot]

A few years ago I hit with a tennis journalist regularly. He told me that back in the era after Agassi/Sampras, when the US had a dearth of professional talent, the USTA management didn't care about anything except the few prospects that could potentially make it to the top 50. They didn't even care about the developing the pipeline of 18 and under or college players, only the handful that were closest to climbing into top 50. Its sounds like that myopia still exists. The leagues are probably still an afterthought at best to the USTA leadership.

 

[JLyon]

A few years ago I hit with a tennis journalist regularly. He told me that back in the era after Agassi/Sampras, when the US had a dearth of professional talent, the USTA management didn't care about anything except the few prospects that could potentially make it to the top 50. They didn't even care about the developing the pipeline of 18 and under or college players, only the handful that were closest to climbing into top 50. Its sounds like that myopia still exists. The leagues are probably still an afterthought at best to the USTA leadership.

honestly not much has changed, to many times have seen the USTA take the Top 12U and ignore all others even when many of the 12U end up not panning out down the road.

 

[Jack the Hack]

Ha! We just got our Nationals trophies today. They arrived at our captain's house. So 6 weeks is basically how long it takes for the USTA to send them after Nationals is over...