My apologies to everyone for the length of this post and the two that follow, but I wanted to share with you the following letter that was written my myself (captain of the SoCal women's team) and the captain of the Florida women's team, and endorsed by the captains of 13 other teams that participated in 18+ 4.5 Nationals in Arlington, TX the weekend of Oct 12-14. The event was pretty much a disaster from start to finish, due to horrible weather and a total lack of contingency planning by the USTA.
Ours was certainly not the first such national USTA competition to be severely impacted by bad weather, nor will it be the last – unless and until the USTA steps up and administers these events properly, beginning with having adequate contingency plans in place.
(Given the 10000-character limit placed on posts to this message board, I will have to split the letter into three posts.)
To the USTA President, Board of Directors, Adult Tennis National Committee, and Senior Management:
We are the captains of the Florida and Southern California 18+ women’s 4.5 teams who participated in the Nationals event hosted in Arlington, TX, October 12-14. We are writing on behalf of our own team members as well as a number of other women’s and men’s teams who were also at the event; their names and teams are listed below. (Note that this list includes the captains of both teams that ultimately earned the title of National Champions – the Southern women’s team and the Midwestern men’s team.)
We write you to express our extreme disappointment and frustration with the handling of our Nationals event, and to respond to the letter that we received on October 17 from Jeff Waters (Managing Director of USTA Community Tennis) regarding the same (a copy of which is attached hereto for your reference). For the reasons set forth below, we believe that Mr. Waters’ letter fails to adequately redress the numerous problems posed by the format changes implemented by event officials over the weekend.
To help you better understand the issues we are raising, we will begin with a brief recap of what transpired during the event:
1. It was obvious to all of the team captains that tournament officials wanted to be in a position to say that despite the inclement weather, they had succeeded in completing all four rounds of “matches” that had been in the original tournament schedule. We could not tell whether they made this the priority at the direction of more senior USTA personnel in the National office, or whether they had the discretion to consider other options (such as reducing the number of preliminary rounds from four to three). But their single-minded determination to accomplish this goal required them to repeatedly abbreviate the format of these so-called “matches” – so much so that the quality of matches was sacrificed and the reliability of the resulting scores nullified. Matches during Rounds One and Two lasted barely more than 30 minutes each; matches during Rounds Three and Four lasted less than 15 minutes.
For a competition among 4.5-level players, the results generated by these formats (particularly in Rounds Three and Four) were not a true indication of the better player(s). So even if all teams were subjected to the same conditions, many of the components crucial to winning a competitive match were effectively removed from the equation – most significantly, mental and physical endurance.
Given the unreliability of the formats used, the validity of the final rankings and resulting selection of the top four teams was highly questionable. (On the women’s side, only one team had a 4-0 record after four rounds; another 6 teams were tied at 3-1. The top three of those teams were ultimately determined based upon total number of lines won and total number of sets lost, but given the inherent, fundamental problems posed by the formats, to then use these razor-thin margins as a tiebreaker was not a trustworthy determination of the top four teams.)
(Letter continues in next two posts.)
Ours was certainly not the first such national USTA competition to be severely impacted by bad weather, nor will it be the last – unless and until the USTA steps up and administers these events properly, beginning with having adequate contingency plans in place.
(Given the 10000-character limit placed on posts to this message board, I will have to split the letter into three posts.)
To the USTA President, Board of Directors, Adult Tennis National Committee, and Senior Management:
We are the captains of the Florida and Southern California 18+ women’s 4.5 teams who participated in the Nationals event hosted in Arlington, TX, October 12-14. We are writing on behalf of our own team members as well as a number of other women’s and men’s teams who were also at the event; their names and teams are listed below. (Note that this list includes the captains of both teams that ultimately earned the title of National Champions – the Southern women’s team and the Midwestern men’s team.)
We write you to express our extreme disappointment and frustration with the handling of our Nationals event, and to respond to the letter that we received on October 17 from Jeff Waters (Managing Director of USTA Community Tennis) regarding the same (a copy of which is attached hereto for your reference). For the reasons set forth below, we believe that Mr. Waters’ letter fails to adequately redress the numerous problems posed by the format changes implemented by event officials over the weekend.
To help you better understand the issues we are raising, we will begin with a brief recap of what transpired during the event:
- Beginning one week before the competition was scheduled to commence, weather forecasts were consistently calling for heavy rain in Arlington throughout the weekend. It is unclear what, if any, efforts were made by the tournament officials at that time to secure adequate indoor courts (or whether they even had the support of more senior USTA personnel to do so). Whatever contingency measures they may have discussed, based upon conversations one team captain had with them on Thursday October 11, their “plan” was to hope for enough dry weather on Friday and Saturday to complete four rounds of play – and to shorten the format and accelerate the match schedule in any way necessary to achieve that goal.
- By Friday October 12, there was no escaping the heavy rain that was forecasted to arrive by sometime that afternoon. When teams checked in at the tournament desk on Friday morning, we were informed that the first matches would begin at 7:00am (instead of 7:30am), and that the format would be abbreviated by shortening the sets from 6 games to 4 (with a deciding game at 3 games-all), and using only a 7-point match tiebreak in the event of split sets. Starting times for all subsequent matches were moved up 1-2 hours earlier due to the shortened match format.
- But even with these modifications in place, the rain began in earnest on Friday afternoon before two rounds of play could be completed. At this point, tournament officials scrambled to come up with a plan. A few teams whose Round One matches had not yet been completed were sent to a facility in Fort Worth (30 miles away) with two indoor courts. But no other indoor courts could be secured, so officials sent everyone else back to their hotels to await further instructions.
- On Friday night, tournament officials contacted those captains whose teams had not been able to complete their Round Two matches, and informed them that their only option was to finish those matches on Saturday morning at 6:00am at an indoor facility in Dallas (Brookhaven Country Club) – 30 miles from Arlington. These were the only indoor courts that tournament officials were able to secure, and they were only available from 6:00am to 7:30am.
- Those teams impacted by this directive (some of whom had already played a 7:00am match on Friday) had to leave Arlington at 5:15am on Saturday and drive through torrential rain to arrive at Brookhaven by 6:00am. Once their Round Two matches were complete, there was nothing to do but return to Arlington because tournament officials were unable to secure additional indoor court time until 8:30pm that evening – once again in Dallas at Brookhaven (which could not make courts available any earlier because it had already committed to hosting the Texas Combo Doubles Sectionals event from 6:00pm to 8:00pm).
- Determined to squeeze two more rounds into a three-hour time window, tournament officials abridged the format for Rounds Three and Four even further – to a single set of the first to 4 games with no-ad scoring (win by 2), and a 7-point deciding tiebreak at 4 games-all.
- Of the 16 courts at Brookhaven that were used for match play, only eight were true “indoor courts” that were housed in a climate-controlled building which was reasonably well-lit. The remaining eight courts were simply “covered courts” housed in what was aptly referred to as the “Barn.” The courts in the Barn, while shielded from the rain, were very dimly lit and had an extremely low ceiling that effectively precluded any lobbing. The lack of consistent playing conditions across all courts, coupled with the extreme times of day at which some teams were forced to play, created an unlevel playing field that arbitrarily gave some teams an advantage over others.
- After the completion of each round of play, tournament officials converted the actual (abbreviated) scores to the standard format of 2-out-of-3 sets (first to 6 games) so that they could be entered into Tennis Link. Once all four rounds were completed (sometime after 1:00am on Sunday), the officials used these manufactured results to determine the top four finishing men’s and women’s teams who would advance to the semifinals later Sunday morning.
- Many players did not get back to their hotels in Arlington until 2:00am or later on Sunday, and tournament officials did not notify teams of the results until 2:15am. Yet all of the semifinalists were required to check in at Arlington Tennis Center at 7:15am (less than five hours later) for their matches to start at 7:30am – this time using the standard 2-out-of-3-set format.
1. It was obvious to all of the team captains that tournament officials wanted to be in a position to say that despite the inclement weather, they had succeeded in completing all four rounds of “matches” that had been in the original tournament schedule. We could not tell whether they made this the priority at the direction of more senior USTA personnel in the National office, or whether they had the discretion to consider other options (such as reducing the number of preliminary rounds from four to three). But their single-minded determination to accomplish this goal required them to repeatedly abbreviate the format of these so-called “matches” – so much so that the quality of matches was sacrificed and the reliability of the resulting scores nullified. Matches during Rounds One and Two lasted barely more than 30 minutes each; matches during Rounds Three and Four lasted less than 15 minutes.
For a competition among 4.5-level players, the results generated by these formats (particularly in Rounds Three and Four) were not a true indication of the better player(s). So even if all teams were subjected to the same conditions, many of the components crucial to winning a competitive match were effectively removed from the equation – most significantly, mental and physical endurance.
Given the unreliability of the formats used, the validity of the final rankings and resulting selection of the top four teams was highly questionable. (On the women’s side, only one team had a 4-0 record after four rounds; another 6 teams were tied at 3-1. The top three of those teams were ultimately determined based upon total number of lines won and total number of sets lost, but given the inherent, fundamental problems posed by the formats, to then use these razor-thin margins as a tiebreaker was not a trustworthy determination of the top four teams.)
(Letter continues in next two posts.)
