Why?USTA Southern has just changed their USTA Southern League Rules

[tennis-n-sc]

You have misunderstood. I never suggested banning anyone. Just adding another age group i.e. NTRP 35 and over. NTRP league play is open to anyone ages 19 and up and that would remian as would 50 and 60 and over NTRP. The problem many folks have is when they get bumped to another division (mostly 4.5 -5.0) often they are rendered non-competitive. I would say this applies to singles more than doubles and to older players more than the younger ones.

In seniors you only play doubles so the physical nature required to play singles is a non-issue. Of course in doubles kids in the U.S. are taught doubles so poorly I would agree with you for the most part that in doubles experience in many cases can out do brawn.

Not a bad idea.

 

[the_playa]

even if they still use NTRP tournaments an easy way around it is to just play open level tournaments and beat up on 5.0/5.5 while staying a 4.5. Example look at 2006 4.5 National Champs and their Top Singles player. He is now a Benchmark 5.0 but in 2006 he beat plenty of 5.0/5,5 players in Open Tournaments, but no matches would hurt his rating.

lol. you're talking about trent broach, i assume. i and my cocaptain complained vigorously about him to Tosha Smith at USTA Texas (after THEY had disqualified one of our players, who was clearly inferior to Broach) but was told he was totally legitimate.

 

[JLyon]

bingo, he obviously lied on his player profile in 2005 when he first signed-up. Pretty sad on Texas Section to not clamp down on such an obvious act to decieve the system.

 

[cghipp]

Well,I know this girl who played at 3.5 in league and tournaments. She didn't get bumped to 4.0, so she appealed and got a 4.0....duh!!! Why would you do that; except for ego pleasure. Think of how much you could help a combo team if you didn't get bumped. Why appeal?

I didn't see this when you first responded, but I'll answer now.

- because I have worked hard to improve my game and I want my rating to reflect that
- because I am as good as or better than a great number of 4.0 players I regularly play against
- because I tired of being hassled by 3.5 opponents about how I have no business playing 3.5
- because I want a better excuse than "I'm too busy" to play on fewer 3.5 teams
- because a 4.0 player is more desirable to have on a 4.0 team than a 3.5 player (duh!)
- because my goal is to eventually be a 4.5 player, and you kind of have to be a 4.0 player first

How many more reasons do you need?

 

[cghipp]

About the tanking thing - any chance this is a regional or gender phenomenon? The women I play with would rather chew their arm off than tank a match.

 

[Caswell]

I can never understand this mentality. Have they lost their drive to improve their game? What makes them lose so that they can win? Forget about cheating the system, they are cheating themselves and they cannot escape that...

I think part of it is completely outside of the realm of "drive to improve their game".

In Florida at least, 4.0 is the sweet spot if you want lots of competition. Typically the 4.0 level will have the most teams in league play, and the largest draws in tournament play. Notice that the players (like me) below 4.0 want to move up and the players above either want to stay put or move down?

As for the tournament situation, personally I think it's a bad move. I played three NTRP tournaments last year and was planning on playing five this year. Winning matches and moving up was a big part of my motivation to play. Ranking means nothing.