The New Davis Cup/ATP Cup format is weak. There’s a better model.

The Davis Cup is the annual international team competition of men’s tennis. It was founded in 1900 as a challenge match between the U.S. and Great Britain. In 1981 it expanded to a World Group of 16 countries, with a system of promotion and relegation, making it the World Cup of tennis.

The Davis Cup is managed and run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the world governing body of tennis. The ITF also runs Fed Cup for women. The main Davis Cup corporate partners are BNP and Rakuten with Barcelona soccer star Gerard Pique and his Kosmos Investment Group running the show as of 2019.

When Gerard Pique took over last year, his primary modification to Davis Cup was hosting the World Group at a single venue over one week, with eighteen teams divided into six round-robin groups of three. The winners of the six groups advanced to the quarterfinals along with two second place finishers. The format for these World Group duels featured two singles matches and one doubles match, instead of the traditional best-of-5 series.

With Davis Cup “evolving,” the ATP Tour announced the creation of a rival event, the ATP Cup (with the exact same two singles/one doubles format as Davis Cup). As many predicted at the time, men’s tennis now has too many international team competitions (see Laver Cup). The players find it exhausting. With only one host country, most matches feature empty seats. The competitions are too condensed and there’s barely a team element to a three match format. Even the players who thought adding the ATP Cup was a good idea have come to the realization that it provides nothing new (while complicating preparations for a major). With apologies to host city Madrid, the new Davis Cup was even worse.

While I never loved the previous Davis Cup system, which seemed to last all year without fans knowing what stage the tournament had reached, there were many positives. Passionate home crowds, packed venues and the host country’s choice of playing surface were all attractive elements of the previous regime. While the old best-of-5 is certainly better than best-of-3, an even broader format that tests a team’s depth would reward national player development while reducing the dominance of a single player. Indeed, the best thing about Laver Cup is the breadth of 12 total matches, singles and doubles, contested among two teams of six players. That’s team tennis. All we learned from the current Davis Cup and ATP Cup format is that Spain has Rafa Nadal and Serbia has Novak Djokovic.

Understanding the governance of professional tennis, money will ultimately dictate how these events are managed in the future. Giving the ATP some leverage in financial negotiations is probably why the ATP Cup exists at all. In the past, Davis Cup had to schedule around the ATP tour calendar. Now, with the Davis Cup format condensed and the event scheduled to follow the year-end Masters, the ATP no longer has the scheduling cards it once held. Just from the standpoint of what’s good for the game, it would be great not to have two virtually identical team events competing for attention and players’ commitments less than two months apart. The natural solution of course is to kill the ATP Cup or merge it with Davis Cup (read: give the ATP tour a cut of Davis Cup). But even then, the Davis Cup should move in a better direction.

Not every country can field six world class players, much less a second (Moldova), so perhaps simply returning to the best-of-5 format makes sense if also limiting the matches one player can play. Either way, the current 18 teams in one place, with fan support for just one or two countries, isn’t working. Instead, the first few rounds of Davis Cup should be hosted on home soil, with the entire event culminating in a Final Four that has the build-up it deserves and the attention of the entire sports world.

First round byes could expand the competition while limiting the time commitment of overworked stars. Each round would take place in each season of the year.

Round 1 (First week of March): Eight Teams ranked #17-24 play eight teams ranked #9-16 at eight host sites across the globe.

Round 2 (Late July): Eight winners of round 1 play eight teams ranked #1-8 at eight host sites across the globe.

Round 3 (September): Eight winners of round 2 meet at four host sites across the globe.

Final Four (End of November): Four winners of round 3 meet at one host site for the semifinals and final.

The one interesting element to the ATP Cup that could be incorporated into Davis Cup: qualification and seeding based on player rankings. Otherwise, scrap ATP Cup, give the tour its stake in Davis Cup, bring back the fun of Hopman Cup (which was cancelled to make way for ATP Cup) and let’s get on with making international team tennis must watch TV.

– Jeff Menaker

First Ballot

Back during the US Open, Stadium Journey revisited an interview we did back in 2014. Here is the 2019 version; my best case for first ballot entry to the Ballperson Hall of Fame. Is there a Ballperson Hall of Fame?

Q & A With Former U.S. Open Ballboy and Tennis Swiss Army Knife Jeff Menaker

The interviewer, Jon Hart, is the author of Man versus Ball (among other things). The book is a unique and endlessly entertaining first-hand look at the fringes of the professional sports world. Definitely worth a read. A great stocking stuffer!

https://www.amazon.com/Jon-Hart/e/B00BJ7CFU6/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

– Jeffrey Menaker

2 match points…

This has been bugging me all week. Apparently it’s been bugging others as well.

Listen, I’m no GOAT 🐐. I know hindsight is 2020, but: If I had the chance to win Wimbledon at 8-7 in the 5th set, and I can do it by beating Nadal and Djokovic back-to-back, and I’m 37 years old, and I have 2 match points, nay, CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS to close out the final, on my serve, and I’ve been serving great all match, and I often struggle to close out Nadal/Djokovic, and my name is FEDERER… I am taking the opportunity right then and there to try FOUR (4) first serves, all out, no holds barred, up the “T” for an ace, four straight times.

Tell me Roger couldn’t convert one out of four.

There’s a time for analytics and repeatable patterns and serve +1 forehands, but, when it comes to closing out a match, that’s a moment for killer instinct and letting the chips fall where they may.

Go Big or Go Home!

Jeff Menaker

USTA Xenophobia and the NCAA Tournaments

Congratulations to the Longhorns of the University of Texas at Austin on their first ever NCAA Division 1 Men’s Team Tennis Championship and to the Stanford Women on their 20th Women’s title. It’s quite a contrast in stories. At Stanford, coach Lele Forood has a ring for every finger on both hands as the Cardinal has won more than half of the NCAA championships since they started playing it for women. They upended #1 ranked Georgia in the final on Sunday. Texas beat defending men’s champ, Wake Forest, in a remarkable finish to a season that included longtime UT head coach, Michael Center, getting arrested and subsequently fired mid-season. Center was charged and pled guilty in the college admissions bribery scandal.

The Texas story is fascinating as Associate Head Coach Bruce Berque now seems a lock to succeed Center, winning a “natty” as Interim Coach. Much of the credit for winning the title match goes to Texas seniors Colin Markes and Rodrigo Banzer who took advantage of a younger bottom third of the Wake lineup. After losing the doubles point, it was Texas juniors Christian Sigsgaard (Denmark) and Yuya Ito (Japan) who sealed the victory at the 1 and 2 positions over Wake’s Borna Gojo (Croatia) and Petros Chrysochos (Cyprus), last year’s NCAA singles finalists. Didn’t see that coming.

National treasure, Slam.Tennis, ran 1000 simulations of singles outcomes after Wake won the doubles point. The least likely outcome, Texas winning 4-1, was exactly what we got. Even the matches that didn’t complete were looking favorable for UT, so we saw a very special effort from Texas on Sunday.

Division 1 Tennis now turns from the team event to the NCAA singles and doubles tournaments. Both NCAA individual and team championships are airing on Tennis Channel this year, so the sport is making some progress in terms of exposure. Though Tennis Channel could learn a thing or two about how to cover a dual match with six courts. Hint: less like Wimbledon, more like the Masters.

One yearly frustration for college tennis fans has been the steady stream of players withdrawing from the NCAA singles and doubles tournaments. Last year’s men’s singles finalists, Chrysochos and Gojo, were both among the withdrawals from singles this week. A few years ago it was Brit hero (current world #41) Cameron Norrie from TCU withdrawing from NCAA singles to turn pro and attempt to qualify for Wimbledon (which he did). Bobby Knight of College Tennis Today put it best during last year’s unprecedented wave of withdrawals, “the hospitality tent must not be serving good food… no one wants to play men’s singles.”

The solution to withdrawals has been debated for years, but, there is a strong consensus among college coaches on returning the NCAA individual events to prominence. Having the matches on television is certainly a good start. Some have suggested the NCAA singles and doubles tournaments take place before the team competition. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the individual events could precede the team event. Nobody wants to risk an injury that could jeopardize a team’s postseason chances.

A better solution to keep top players competing in the NCAA individual events is to switch the Division 1 singles and doubles tournaments to the end of the fall season, when the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) holds its Regional and National Championships. The chief concern one hears about switching the ITA and NCAA Division 1 events on the calendar is that players who perform well at a fall NCAA tournament may decide to turn pro and desert their teams for the spring season. I’m not sure this is a legitimate issue since most players who win the ITA national title don’t leave school. DM on Twitter if you can think of any who did. Regardless, there are sensible policy changes that could easily incentivize the choice to remain in school. These are the same policy decisions that could keep NCAAs in the spring anyway. To understand the fix, we need to understand the root of the problem.

Examining which players are withdrawing, it’s no surprise that the majority are top international players who have legitimate hopes of professional careers. Traditionally, the USTA would grant the men’s and women’s NCAA singles and doubles champions direct entry to the US Open main draw. With foreign players using the U.S. college pathway to develop toward professional tennis, non-American players often won the NCAA individual events and a main draw US Open wild card. That irked the xenophobes. About 10 or 15 years ago, the USTA torpedoed the incentive for top international players to compete in the NCAA Tournament by limiting professional wildcards to U.S. players only. Heaven forbid a non-American earn something through the greatness of our system. Now, for an international player on the cusp of a pro career, the NCAA individual events win them nothing but a missed opportunity to compete for professional opportunities in Europe. For college tennis to be better and for American college players to get better, this has to change. France has 10 of the top 100 ATP players; a disproportionate number for their population. The French welcome internationals to challenge their players in France while the U.S. bars foreign juniors from Kalamazoo and wastes American coaching of international collegians. 

The USTA needs to see the forest for the trees in their wild card offerings. If the USTA truly supports college tennis, and I believe they want to, they should promote the NCAA Tournament from a competitive standpoint. Amidst a restructuring of pro tennis, new wild card policies were adopted this year to bolster “the collegiate pathway.” It’s great to see additional opportunities for college players, but, instead of creating extra qualifying events everywhere, USTA should champion the NCAA events that are already in place.

While moving NCAA Division 1 singles and doubles to the fall would likely benefit the entire spring schedule, the USTA has the facility to add value to the event, whenever it’s played. Right now, the USTA doesn’t even guarantee a main draw entry for an American NCAA singles champion. They offer a qualifying spot or “strong consideration for the main draw.” That’s less support for college tennis than an era when USTA wasn’t lifting a finger for college players.

To have the most competitive NCAA individual draws, USTA should award the NCAA champions with guaranteed main draw entry into the US Open, no matter where they come from. If the champions are not Americans, and you just can’t handle that, award an additional US Open main draw entry to the top American finishers. This is not taking away from deserving qualifiers. Every year there are lucky losers from the qualifying who gain entry to the US Open main draw. The spots exist.

Additionally, the USTA should be rewarding the top 16 NCAA finishers with main draw and qualifying opportunities at all ATP events on American soil, including the summer events leading up to the US Open, Newport, Atlanta, Washington, Cincinnati, Winston-Salem as well as New York and Delray Beach in the winter. This level of commitment from the USTA would strengthen college tennis as a pathway to the pros, keep top players incentivized to play NCAAs and improve the level of college tennis as more of those young players who struggle alone out there, hoping to make a professional dream come true, turn to college as a legitimate pathway. Those that learn a hard truth or two will get an education along the way.

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Hats off to future ITA Hall of Famer, Bid Goswami, on the conclusion of his incredible 37 year career at Ivy powerhouse, Columbia. Coach Goswami was named ITA National Coach of the Year on Sunday. He went out in style, winning his 500th career dual match early in the season, sweeping the Ivy League schedule for Columbia’s sixth consecutive Ivy title, reaching the NCAA sweet 16 for the second consecutive year and fourth time overall. Goswami was also named 2019 Ivy League Coach of the Year as well as ITA Northeast Regional Coach of the Year, while guiding senior Victor Pham to Ivy League Player of the Year honors. Pham and sophomore Jack Lin qualified for the NCAA singles tournament (both winning first round matches on Monday with Lin advancing to the round of 16 on Tuesday).

Goswami guided Columbia to the first top-five national ranking in program and Ivy League history in 2018. They reached #8 in 2019. He has coached players who received a total of four All-America honors as well as eight Ivy League Player of the Year recipients. The former touring pro and member of the Indian Davis Cup team also led the Lions to the sweet 16 of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Indoor Team Championship four times. Columbia is the only Ivy school to ever reach the ITA sweet 16. Between the ITA Indoor Championship and the NCAA Tournament, Goswami has put Columbia among the nation’s elite programs with eight Sweet 16 appearances in the last ten nationals.

Since taking over at Columbia in 1982, Goswami has had at least 15 players go to the pro tour, including 1987 EITA Player of the Year, Phil Williamson, 1990 Collegiate Senior Player of the Year, Jeff Chiang, Winston Lin, Rob Kresberg and Max Schnur, who competed in the 2017 Wimbledon main draw and is back on tour now after injury. In 2013, Goswami coached the duo of Schnur and Ashok Narayana to stun the #1 nationally ranked pair of Hunter Reese and Mikelis Libietis (Tennessee), winning the doubles draw of the ITA/USTA National Intercollegiate Tennis Championships.

Goswami’s final season at Columbia wasn’t too shabby. The Lions went 19-4 with their only losses against defending national champs #1 Wake Forest (who they had on the ropes), eventual NCAA champion Texas, NCAA #1 seed Ohio State, and TCU at Fort Worth. They had wins over Baylor (who beat Texas in the Big 12 title match), Virginia Tech, Penn State, Tulane, Notre Dame, Northwestern and the full Ivy schedule. This year’s squad also ranks #1 among Columbia Athletics in team GPA. Goswami ends his career with 510 dual match victories. His first ever recruit, Howie Endelman, will take the reins at Columbia on solid footing.

Jeff Menaker

Code Violation: Poor Marketing | Poor Sportsmanship

While Gael Monfils was doing his best Federer/Nadal impression by turning back the clock to win in Rotterdam last week, 21 year old American, Reilly Opelka, won his first career ATP Tour title at the New York Open. I’ve had a chance to see the New York Open live the past two years. Following its move from Memphis to Long Island in 2018, could there be a more poorly marketed sporting event? New Yorkers were offered a rare glimpse into the post-Djokovic future of tennis and at times throughout the week it looked like there were more officials and ball runners on court than people in the stands. Talking to New York City tennis players on a daily basis, I find a majority still don’t know the event exists or that it takes place at the refurbished Nassau Coliseum. It’s a terrific venue with great potential and those unique black courts (which seemed faster this year). At least the tournament ball people remain committed to throwing the ball. The rolling of balls at tournaments everywhere has eroded the quality of ball runners (not to mention the balls themselves) while adding dead air to tennis broadcasts.

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In college tennis, #2 ranked Ohio State edged defending champion, Wake Forest, in Chicago on Monday to win the ITA Men’s Indoor National Championship and take over the #1 ranking. ITA Indoors is Division 1 college tennis’ preseason championship, the culmination of the ITA Kickoff events held across the country in January to start the spring semester tennis season. While the season-ending NCAA Tournament in May is looked on as the true national championship, ITA Indoors is a better tournament. Beginning with its fascinating draft where teams, in order of ranking, get to pick which top 15 host site they want to visit, ITA Kickoff/Indoors is comprised exclusively of the nation’s top-ranked teams. While NCAA must honor the automatic bids of each member conference champion (adding lower-ranked teams to the NCAA field), ITA Indoors is never watered down. The result is more competitive early rounds during Kickoff Weekend. The winners at the 15 Kickoff sites then join a 16th team, which hosts an indoor gathering of the 16 best, often at the height of their powers, before the season’s inevitable injuries reshape the landscape. Some “purists,” believing tennis should be played outdoors, like to dismiss the results at Indoors. However, there is no significant difference in win proportion based on indoor vs outdoor venues. The champion in February often finishes as the champion in May. With weather at recent southern host sites predictably wet in May, large portions of the NCAA tournament are played indoors anyway, including two of the last three team finals and individual finals.

College Tennis seems to have it backwards. The ITA tournament should culminate in a warm climate like Florida, Arizona, SoCal or South Texas in February and NCAAs should be played far away from the Southeast in May. California and New York are beautiful in May and far less rainy than Georgia, Florida, North Carolina or the Oklahoma tornado season. Indoor backup should always be included in the plan and officials shouldn’t be afraid to use it.

Next up, I submit for your disapproval the closing moments of an ACC women’s dual match between Clemson and Notre Dame. Did you see that? At the end of the match, the vanquished ND player goes to pick up her towel instead of directly to the net to shake her opponent’s hand. This lame move happens way too often at the end of matches. Lose the match? Turn your back and go get your towel. This obnoxious practice, seen throughout USTA junior tournaments for several years, has now made its way into the college game. Players, especially losing players, have started taking long walks to pick up their towel as a final act of disrespect for their opponent, the game, and themselves, before finally sauntering to the net for the mandatory handshake. This has to end. It is completely within USTA’s power to make it end in junior tournaments, where it starts. A simple loss of ranking points for a less than speedy handshake will quickly reestablish the norms. Kids will be running to the net to shake hands before the ball has stopped rolling. Can you imagine a pro going to retrieve their towel before shaking hands with an opponent and umpire? In the case of Notre Dame, their players seem to do it even when they win.

Of course, extenuating circumstances may prevent a player from making a beeline to the net for a handshake. We’ve seen collapsing from exhaustion, collapsing from elation, hobbled competitors barely able to stand, and in college tennis there’s storming the court on the clinching point of a dual match. That said, storming the court is getting a bit out of hand lately. I mean, c’mon people! Pretend you’ve won a match before. Really, UCLA? You’ve never beaten Grand Canyon? Obviously, major upsets, tournament wins and championships deserve the ebullience of college sport. However, the frequency of court storming is starting to cross the same line as the towel walk at the end of matches. Here’s a link featuring both infractions in the same match! Here’s a link to a more appropriate match point.

According to the USTA Code: “Shaking hands at the end of a match is an acknowledgment by the players that the match is over.” Certainly, a failure to shake hands is a code violation. A failure to do so promptly should be viewed much the same as an in-match time violation. At least the Notre Dame players got around to shaking hands. The same cannot be said for the pros in Budapest, the site of an epic breakdown in sportsmanship (and officiating) on the WTA Tour. The incident began with a Spanish doubles team failing to own up to knocking a ball over the net with a head. Tennis balls, by rule, must be struck with a racquet. Incredible that the chair umpire missed this, in a deciding tiebreaker!! It’s even more incredible that a professional would not own up to it. If not for the honor of the game itself or for your own dignity, at least realize the match is being recorded and you’re going to be forever known as a cheater. The Australian opponents, who ended up losing the match, were not impressed on court or on Instagram. Though I’m sure it has happened before, this is the first instance of publicly shaming opponents that I can recall on the pro tour. In college, public shaming over line calls is now a common affair.

Following the match in Budapest, neither Aussie was having any part of a handshake. They did choose to shake the umpire’s hand, despite his epic failure. Just another lame tournament where umpires continue to make the case for their replacement by AI, ball runners wear jeans and, you guesses it, they roll the ball. 👎

Jeff Menaker

 

Tennis Avenger

Life sure has its fair share of gut-wrenching, stop you in your tracks jolts of anguish. The death of Christian Gloria has shaken the New York tennis community to its core. For a blog that spends most of its pages pondering the future of tennis, Christian’s journey from the courts of Cunningham Park to Cardozo High School and college tennis would have been a worthy topic here any time. Today I am lamenting the loss of one of Queens’ brightest young tennis talents. Any other article about the serve +1 ball, NCAA host sites, or the finer points of Davis Cup seeding will just have to wait. Life’s rich pageant would be hollow without its dirges or its New Orleans style funeral marches to celebrate the lives we live to their ends. However, from the outpouring of shock and grief on social media, I know I am not alone in saying this tragedy seems particularly unjust. The story of Christian Gloria is one of such cosmic cruelty, it is difficult to even type the words.

Christian Gloria was the poster child of what Queens looks like in the year 2018. His face, innocent and sweet, belying an inner toughness and an edge that tennis has a remarkable way of revealing. A smiling contradiction of personas, a sweet boy, a fighter, an athlete, an artist, a joker, a dancer, a loyal friend and teammate. A kid from a loving American family, Filipino, New Yorker, searching like all kids to find himself and his place in society. When I think of Christian, I think of the mural on a Northern Blvd handball court featuring Queens’ most famous superhero, Spider-man, lifting a subway train. The mural reads: “Queens is the Future.” If Stan Lee had written his first Spider-man comic in 2018, featuring Peter Parker from Queens, Peter would look just like Christian and his great hands at the net would translate well to his role with the Avengers. Like Peter Parker, Christian experienced profound personal setbacks and grief. Just like Marvel’s most beat-upon hero, Christian demonstrated the kind of resilience tennis instills at an early age. At 20 trips around the sun, young and hopeful, he was just getting started.

I coached Christian in USTA Jr Team Tennis here in New York City and got to know him and members of his family. I had met his big sister Nikki through her work with NYJTL and the Mayor’s Cup Scholastic Tennis Tournament. Christian was in middle school at the time, playing up an age group. One of Queens’ emerging tennis talents, he was soon to join the New York tennis powerhouse at Cardozo High School in Bayside. When I first met Christian, his mother, Lelibeth, was battling cancer. I remember meeting her, a charming warm woman, an athlete, a tennis player, weary from cancer treatments and worry for the future of her son. Christian lived at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida before Lelibeth made the decision to bring him home to New York. She had become concerned with Christian’s off-court development and considered ceasing his tennis training completely. Luckily, she was able to find a happy balance and seeing him play junior team tennis was a pleasure for his coach.

Christian died Saturday morning at the age of 20 in a single car wreck in Bergen County, New Jersey at 4:30AM. 20 years old. 4:30AM. An hour and age too often associated with grievous choices and fatal consequences. There’s nothing more to say about this. I don’t need the results of an investigation to know good judgement was not on hand. For the Gloria family, and the New York tennis family, Christian’s death is a tragedy compounding the death of his mother in 2013. What makes losing Christian so astonishingly heartbreaking is that Christian’s life has been cut short in the middle of a battle which seemed to be turning his way. Christian had been a member of the ASA Junior College men’s tennis team; a strong program often associated with players who have taken the next step to play at major Division 1 college tennis programs. He was beginning a career in music, recording songs and discovering opportunities to learn about the industry. The death of his mother, when he was 14, was going to be challenging any way you slice it, but, Christian and his support system were up to the challenge.

My son is 11 and his best friend from school recently lost his mother (also breast cancer, also Filipino). The expression “that is a brutal age to lose your mother,” intoned repeatedly among members of our community, has been thrown into haunting, sharp relief. For Christian, a boy who shared his mother’s athleticism and love of tennis, I can’t help thinking back to a conversation I had with Lelibeth about Christian’s future. As we sat watching one of his tennis matches, she told me that her biggest fear facing the possibility of death was the potential impact on Christian. In nature, when it comes to sniffing out danger, mothers know best. The Lelibeth Gloria Memorial Tennis Tournament happens every fall at Cunningham Park in Queens. It just happens that this year’s event was scheduled for 9am Saturday, the morning Christian died.

My thoughts are with Christian’s sister Nikki, his brother Barry and his dad, Butch. The power above has drafted one elite mother/son mixed doubles team. A pair of Avengers are missed on Earth.

-Jeff Menaker

Onin

NCAA’s .500 rule manipulates tennis scheduling. That’s good!

With TV coverage of the NCAA tennis tournament vanishing, fan loyalty pushed to its limits over the NCAA’s handling of inclement weather and the fight against malicious line calls all troubling emblems of the 2018 college tennis season, the year’s signature scandal was, of course, the Arkansas vs Tennessee State six match debacle.

To summarize, Arkansas’ women’s team, after a surprise run at the SEC tournament, earned itself a top 30 ranking, worthy of selection to the NCAA team tournament. However, the NCAA has a rule which precludes teams with losing records from at-large tournament selection. The typical way for teams under .500 to qualify is to schedule a match (or three) on one day, with a weaker opponent, perhaps pay them to play (as Arkansas did), and raise the record to .500 before tournament selection. The fluidity of a college tennis season, particularly with spring weather, allows for short-notice scheduling one wouldn’t see in other sports. It happens every year, though not always at the end of the season; a power conference team that suffered a rough conference schedule will add a day of non-competitive matches to get right with the .500 rule before nationals. Debate the practice all you like. Arkansas went hog wild.

At 10-16, Arkansas was way below .500. They were also up against their limit for dates of competition, having used 23 of 25 dates by my count. They scheduled SIX matches for a single day with Tennessee State and, no surprise, won all six. Whether it was the seeming lack of concern for player well-being or the desperate spectacle of six matches against a weaker opponent just to push a record to .500, college tennis lost its collective mind; sparking the ritual calls for elimination of the .500 rule we hear every April.

Kansas State, seeing itself on the tournament bubble if Arkansas qualified, launched a third party protest with the Intercollegiate Tennis Association over Arkansas’ lineup in three of the six matches. Turns out it can be grueling playing six tennis matches in one day (doubles and singles), and Arkansas was creative in how it went about keeping players on the court. Arkansas was accused of stacking their lineup with players playing out of order during the last three matches of a long… day?… night?… 14 hours! The NCAA Division I Tennis Committee reviewed the protest filed with the ITA and determined that, for selection purposes, two of the three protested matches did not count. As a result, Arkansas finished its season at 14-16, missed NCAAs and their coach was dismissed after 15 years at Arkansas.

In the absence of Arkansas, Kansas State made the tournament, but, in an odd twist, the Wildcats seemed to benefit from late entry of results into the ITA reporting system which would have improved University of Washington’s strength of schedule and ITA ranking. If all results had been entered on time and computed properly, one presumes the Huskies would have earned the final spot at NCAAs, not Kansas State.

What Have We Wrought?

The Arkansas AD claims he was convinced to allow the “odd,” “unusual” sextuple-header by the team’s players. The Tennessee State AD told The Tennessean they did it for the $15,000 payment, a significant upgrade to their $28,000 women’s tennis budget, and for the chance to expose their players to SEC competition. The Arkansas coach may have had significant incentives in his contract to finish .500 or make the tournament. In fact, keeping his job may have depended exclusively on whether or not his team qualified for NCAAs. Had his team not played so well during the SEC Tournament, he might not have been tempted to make a six match mockery of the .500 rule. Who is more at fault, a coach that schedules six matches in one day or the athletics director that puts a job on the line over NCAA qualification? I’m not saying this was the case at Arkansas. However, it wouldn’t be the first time an AD has made tournament qualification the determining factor in a coach’s job security. Regardless, the .500 rule is good for college tennis and should be strengthened to prevent such shenanigans. You read that right! The .500 rule is good for college tennis.

It will take a moment for the power conference coaches’ howling to die down, but, the .500 rule forces equity in scheduling. Because power conference teams are funded with money generated by massive football programs, they can offer the full number of tennis scholarships permitted and sign more top recruits than mid-majors. Mid-majors tend to offer just a few full scholarships, if any. Thus, to play in a power conference means playing a substantial segment of the nation’s top teams, where the weakest in the conference are still ranked higher than the best of many mid-major conferences. This imbalance of power, shaped by the economics of college athletics, is defied by a handful of universities, including a few in the Ivy League, where schools have no athletic scholarships, but, offer the academic rigors and prestige of their institutions, along with an evolving regime of need-based tuition plans. Columbia’s men’s team has been ranked as high as #5 and finished 2018 at #15 while Dartmouth and Harvard both finished #31 and #33 respectively.

In this era of athletics budget cuts and elimination of tennis and other Olympic sports, power conference teams have a duty to schedule a number of mid-majors. It is imperative for the health of the sport that all Division 1 teams have the opportunity to schedule a proper balance of opponents, without barriers to scheduling the power conference schools that have the advantage of funding. It helps mid-majors to recruit by showing that these scheduling opportunities exist. It keeps worthy programs in the rankings mix and it keeps worthy NCAA entrants on the right side of .500. Just from an optics standpoint, strength of teams notwithstanding, it’s not a good look to have losing records in the NCAA tournament.

Because power conference schedules are packed with top-ranked opponents, the .500 rule forces the behemoths to schedule more mid-majors. Scheduling 6-10 mid-majors still offers the opportunity to supplement a challenging conference schedule with additional power conference duals. It’s a simple matter of balance in scheduling. A balance Arkansas should have been seeking after a first round exit from the 2017 SEC Tournament and failure to reach NCAAs. While Arkansas finished well enough to make the NCAA tournament, their 2018 schedule featured just three matches with opponents outside the power conferences. There might be 10 teams in the country that could get away with a schedule like that. 2017 champion Florida scheduled just three mid-majors. Texas A&M, by contrast, scheduled 10 mid-majors with the same SEC schedule as Arkansas. They ended up ranked above Arkansas with a record of 16-10 at tournament time.

In the age of Universal Tennis Ratings, coaches should be able to assess the strength of their rosters and build a schedule that puts them in the best possible position for the postseason. You can’t tell me there were no mid-major programs in the South worthy of Arkansas’ time. They nearly lost to Tulsa and they did lose to Wichita State. They had more than their share of chances to beat top teams when they went 3-10 for the SEC regular season. They had already beaten #15 Kansas in February. Clearly, they overemphasized power conference competition, failed their duty to the sport to schedule mid-majors and got burned for their desperation at the end. Missing the NCAA tournament is a just outcome and we have the .500 rule to thank for it.

But surely, six matches in one day?

The .500 rule should be defended from a six match mockery, but, not by banning six matches in a day. No individual player should appear in more than three dual match lineups in a single day. Make that a rule. Unless you can split your squad to play six matches, a three match limit for individuals will eliminate most six match scenarios and protect players. Secondly, for purposes of NCAA selection, no more than two wins over the same non-conference opponent should count toward a team’s overall record. Need four wins in a day to get to .500? You’ll need to spread the wealth and opportunity among at least two teams. These simple additions to the NCAA Manual and the ITA Rulebook should keep the .500 rule intact and serving its purpose of diversity in scheduling.

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Thanks to all who weighed in on previous posts. An update to the origin story of no service lets in men’s college tennis: Having seen World Team Tennis played without stoppage for service lets in the late ’90s, Harvard tennis coach, Dave Fish, wrote a short white paper on the subject and proposed eliminating lets, not as an anti-cheating measure, but, to reduce confusion on court with all the noise at the NCAA Tournament. The proposal went nowhere at the time, but, several years later it was brought up at an ITA convention and it passed quickly. Though many, including two-time NCAA singles champion and current world #42, Steve Johnson, have cited cheating as the impetus for the rule change in college, it seems that origin story may be apocryphal. Either way, it’s time to play the let across all divisions of NCAA. – Jeff Menaker

Follow me on Twitter: @Jeff_Menaker

If the ball is in your court, play it!

“Innovation is not born from the dream; innovation is born from the struggle.” This quote from author Simon Sinek is the perfect description for how the ugly side of college tennis prompted one of the sport’s overdue innovations.

Several years ago, Division 1 College Tennis had a cheating problem. Not the line call cheating you’re thinking about. That we still have. The issue derived from the speed of serves in men’s college tennis and the reliance on serving to win quick points. As players were finding themselves being aced with frequency, some discovered a nasty little reprieve from hearing the ball go whizzing past. Just as players are left to call their own lines in college tennis, with roving umpires or chair umpires employed to rein in malicious line calls, players are also left to call service lets. So, a growing number of players, finding themselves aced, would call “let” to indicate the ball had just skimmed the edge of the net cord, warranting a do-over.

For those who don’t know a let from a set, when a ball is served to start a point, if it hits the top of the net, but, still lands in the intended service box, the server gets another chance to serve. Whether a ball clipping the net gives an advantage to the server or to the returner is moot. Tennis was once called a “gentleman’s game,” where competitors played with respect for their opponent, respect for themselves and respect for the sport. Naturally, anything deemed to provide an unfair advantage, like a ball striking the net cord accidentally from the start, would have been instantly eliminated by the beneficiary with a “let” or do-over granted. It’s so British, right? Can you imagine a sport developed in the U.S. where the players call a do-over (without an unleashed dog in sight) and continue in good faith?

Good faith is not the signature of college tennis, so as returners discovered a cheating let call to be an employable tactic, the powers that be were forced to address the matter. One difficulty in solving the issue was that roving officials and chair umpires, already in poor position to overrule malicious line calls, could not be expected to rein in phantom service lets. There are always balls that clearly strike the top of the net. However, it’s incredibly difficult to know when a ball has just skimmed the net. Men’s serves can range from 100-130 MPH. University of Georgia great, John Isner, holds the ATP’s official record for the fastest serve at 253 km/h (157.2 mph). The person with the best view of whether a ball has touched the net is actually the returner, who can see a ball changing direction as it approaches. In professional tennis, a sensor on the net indicates a net cord touch by alerting the chair umpire.

Since putting sensors on every college court or asking roving officials to determine whether a ball has skimmed the net is simply unfeasible, the solution was to eliminate let calls on net cord strikes altogether. Play the let! This was for NCAA Division 1 men’s tennis only. Apparently, the women don’t serve fast enough and the men in the other divisions haven’t figured out how to cheat yet.

Playing the net cord is not unique to college tennis. The no-let rule is in place in World Team Tennis, the summer league started by Billie Jean King, who said eliminating lets “just makes for more drama.” Drama is nice, but, speeding up the game has been a priority for tennis at all levels. Though I doubt there is a material shortening of men’s matches, I think it would speed up women’s tennis to play without the interruption of service lets. Here’s a video of Serena Williams trying to get a point started. Women seem to experience more net cords on serve than men. Perhaps that’s because women are shorter on average. Serving from a lower point of contact (and a lower angle) reduces the area the ball has to enter the service box while still clearing the net.

Because they are aiming at a tighter window, there is less space for shorter servers to avoid the net. Eliminating the lets could have a discernible impact on speeding up women’s tennis.

Here’s hoping that playing the net cord on serves is expanded to all of tennis. Any other shot that hits the net cord and goes over is played in good faith. Why should serves be any different? Volleyball plays the ball off the net at all times. Real tennis, or royal tennis, our sport’s precursor, didn’t have any service lets.

It’s not easy to determine who benefits more from net cord serves. As long as net tension is properly maintained, serves that strike the net cord and trickle over are rare. The possibility of a short bounce off the net may force returners to move forward, reducing their reaction time to take full swings at other serves. Thus, you’d think servers gain a bit of an advantage. Yet, watching a returner put away a high bounce off the net, servers might miss the opportunity to take another. Net cords are like a box of chocolates…

The ATP has already tested no-let tennis on the Challenger Tour and at the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan last year. ATP Executive Chairman, Chris Kermode, clearly has it on the fast track. The WTA should follow suit. Since college tennis is leading the way on this, it would be great to see all of college tennis playing no-let in 2019!

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Several readers have contacted me regarding pace of play efforts mentioned in my previous post. One interesting suggestion was that with so many gambling opportunities on so many tennis matches, every day, all around the world, there is a push to make tennis more random for online gambling. Whether this is a fair assessment or not, it does make my argument for one-ad scoring over no-ad scoring seem downright noble. With gambling on NCAA sports now becoming legal in many states, sudden death points and the line call cheating we see on deuce will come into sharper relief. Right on cue, The New York Times has an article on the value of game data in sports betting. It’s an interesting wrinkle, since some historians believe the scoring of real tennis (which we use for lawn tennis) evolved as a way to provide wagering and side bets in the royal courts of Europe. Note to gamblers: According to Alison Weir in Henry VIII: The King and His Court, Anne Boleyn was arrested while watching a real tennis match. Had she bet against Henry? According to Weir: “By all accounts, even allowing for a degree of sycophantic flattery, [Henry] was a world-class [tennis] player.”

Also in my previous post, I mentioned this portable line call device as an option for getting line calls right in college tennis. As the ATP prepares to use live Hawk-Eye to automatically alert if a shot is in or out, in real time, without challenges, without the dramatic wait and without line judges, we are coming to an inflection point in how professional tennis is conducted and perceived. Let’s hope there is trickle down to how children develop in the game. Imagine a sport that doesn’t send sensible parents running the other direction, hands covering children’s eyes from the sight of cheating kids and unhinged parents. Well, there will always be unhinged parents, but, not over line calls. The live Hawk Eye revolution should increase demand for portable line calling devices like In/Out. For those who run junior tournaments, the AI future can’t come soon enough.

Follow me on Twitter: @Jeff_Menaker

Back to Deuce!

With the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships a month in the rearview mirror, and the incoming freshmen due on campus before you know it, now is as good a time as any to look back at “May Madness” and take stock of what college tennis has going for it and where the experience could improve for players and fans.

Dual Matches Are Faster 

At the time Division 1 college tennis was moving to no-ad scoring, one of my arguments against no-ad was that it didn’t speed up matches that much. The eventual loser occasionally wins a game on a sudden-death point and extends the match. Of course, the primary benefit to no-ad scoring is eliminating absurdly long games of “back to deuce.” Attend a Division III match played with regular ad scoring and the difference is stark.

While new time-saving measures like eliminating warm-up between opponents and limiting the break after doubles are more effective at shortening dual matches (and quantifiable), count me among the convinced that no-ad has contributed to faster matches. As a result of all efforts, we’ve seen Division 1 tennis fit itself nicely into a 2-3 hour television window. Strangely, college tennis’ premiere event, the NCAA Team Tournament, is nowhere to be found on television…

Last year it seemed we were onto something when ESPN carried the NCAA men’s and women’s team finals through rain delays in Athens, GA. We had McEnroes in the booth. We had live scoring, stats, and features on the host school. This year there was a live scoring website and separate live-streams of individual courts (some of the feeds glitching). If the goal is to raise the profile of college tennis, zero TV coverage of NCAAs is not moving in the right direction. With six College Match Day events broadcast on Tennis Channel from one location, the USTA National Campus in Florida, it feels more like we’re raising the profile of teams in Florida. If we’ve cut doubles to one set and changed the scoring to fit television, how about three College Match Days from each of six regions: Florida, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta. That’s a season of coast-to-coast coverage.

What Have We Sacrificed? 

Notwithstanding the overall benefit to speeding things up, there are unintended consequences of no-ad scoring: cheating. To quote a friend in the coaching business, “No-ad scoring is the cheater’s paradise.”

Having coached or been a spectator at dozens of college matches over the last few years, the majority of questionable line calls from players happen on deuce/deciding point. The most shared moment of the 2018 NCAA Men’s Singles Tournament on Twitter was the public shaming of a player for an unfortunate line call in the quarterfinals. Was it a deuce point? You betcha!

The video that went viral, posted by the aggrieved team, has since been removed.

Can We Do Better? 

Line call cheating is the one area where college hoops and football can actually look at another sport and say, “Wow, clean up your act.” College Tennis has tried for years to cut down cheating, employing chair umpires to make rulings on impossible angles across 40 feet or more. We seem to be at a point where everyone begrudgingly accepts the overrule penalty system as a deterrent. But what happens when the deterrent isn’t enough? What happens when the quality of the umpires is uneven from court to court? It only takes two overzealous decisions from an umpire for there to be severe implications later in a match. An umpire on a single court can decide the overall result of a close dual match by effectively defaulting a player for a third or fourth overrule late in a match. This is as ugly a way for a sporting event to end as I’ve witnessed and yet we set ourselves up for it on a regular basis. Fair-play line calling system has been advanced as an alternative, but, perhaps seems too idealistic for some to try. Personally, I put my faith in artificial intelligence and have high hopes for this device: inout.tennis/en/index.htm

Paying for six pairs of these cameras would eliminate some of the costs of paying officials over several seasons (roving judges would still be needed to enforce other rules). Anything that reduces the cost of hosting a match is certainly a good thing when you have non-revenue Olympic sports like tennis being cut from athletics programs.

Another Option 

One way to cut down on the cheating line calls we see at deuce is to replace no-ad with one-ad scoring. One-ad provides one more chance at deuce to win the game by two and avoid playing a sudden-death point. It still prevents the never ending deuce game. The cheating that plagues sudden-death points is curtailed with a drop in opportunity.

Though hold-of-serve metrics are different from player to player, the advantage a returner has with a single sudden-death point is slimmed when they have to win two out of three from deuce. Making service breaks more difficult may actually speed up matches as better players will earn their breaks and possibly close out matches faster. Sometimes, playing two extra points can help avoid playing two extra games. The time increase from no-ad to one-ad would need to be studied, but, I’m willing to bet that any increase would be minimal and offset by recent efforts to speed the game.

Why Are College Tennis Fans So Disrespected? 

Leaving aside the lack of television exposure, the NCAA has a habit of leaving its tennis fans out in the rain, literally. The acrobatics the NCAA will put itself through not to move matches indoors, when nature is screaming “no tennis today,” leaves fans waiting hours for decisions to be made and frustrated at the lack of communication. From rain soaked Athens in 2017 to rain-soaked Winston-Salem in 2018, even Tulsa was rain-soaked with tornado warnings in 2016. With plans to hold the NCAA Tournaments in Lake Nona, FL two of the next three years, pack your umbrellas! That 4pm daily thunderstorm will be a killer with just six indoor courts available for backup.

What’s just bizarre is the belief among some officials that tennis is an outdoor sport and should be played outdoors at all costs, even if you have thousands of fans waiting and no clear window for outdoor tennis until well after dark. If tennis must be played outdoors, stop scheduling the tournament in the South in May. Every year we see one of the team finals or individual finals played indoors. If this is so distasteful, schedule the event at USC or Claremont or Arizona every year. Otherwise, the second it starts raining, have your operation ready indoors and start the matches on time.

Every major tennis tournament has come to the realization that indoor tennis is a must when conditions demand it. There are fans there to see a match. There is television coverage that requires an event. The “purists” who believe the sport is meant to be played outdoors should be reminded that the game derives from an indoor sport. Playing indoors removes two conditions, wind and sun, for both players. You can’t tell me the presence of wind or sun should be the determining factor in a tennis match.

The University of Georgia, whose tennis fans call it the spiritual home of college tennis, is spending at least $16 million to build a 6 court indoor facility in hopes of hosting NCAAs again after 2022. With that much concern about indoor backup, why not hold the event in a place that has better weather during May and more indoor courts than 6. The National Tennis Center in Queens has 12 indoor courts to go with the US Open tournament courts, ample seating (which was a complaint among spectators at Winston-Salem) and more practice courts than most schools have courts. Weather in New York is always drier than the South in May. More hotels, less driving, better restaurants, 3 airports, more local alumni. NCAAs should be held at Flushing Meadows as often as possible.

Full disclosure: I’m a New Yorker and appreciate the work being put into improving the US Open facility. Still, NCAAs should be held at sites that have nice weather in May with sufficient indoor backup. Here’s hoping Illinois 2022 will lead the way, assuming we survive the tornadoes in Stillwater 2020.

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton