Tournament Day

Today is a tennis tournament for me and I am excited! The tournament is a Level 6 tournament and has 3 rounds. It will last approximately 2 and a half hours and will finish in a day.

The Format

The tournament will be played in a round robin format, a new addition to the USTA that was added January 1, 2021. A round robin tournament is played such that each player plays every other player. Since this requires many matches per player, the match is shortened from the usual 2 out of 3 sets, to an 8-game pro set. In an 8-game pro set, the first player to win 8-games wins the match. If the match is tied at 7 all, a tiebreaker to 7 points is played, and players must win by at least 2 points. Matches are played one after the other.

Scoring

The scoring of the tournament is decided by the total amount of games won. The player with the most games (and usually the most matches won), wins the tournament, and second and third place are decided likewise. In the unlikely case that the number of games are tied between the top two, the winner is decided by their head-to-head record(who beat who when they played each other).

The winner of the tournament recieves a trophy and the runner-up as well. Depending on the level of the tournament and how many matches you won, you will be awarded USTA points, which will increase your USTA ranking. Since this is a Level 6 tournament, I would be awarded 30 points for every win. But, I cannot win more than 120 points, or 4 matches, for a Level 6 tournament.

Rankings

In USTA round robin and main draw tournaments, there will likely be an amount of people such that everyone may not play the same amount of matches. The people who play less matches will have rankings. Ranked players will have more USTA points than unranked players and will also play the people with the lowest amount of points. My tournament has too few people to include rankings, but I have both been ranked and played ranked players.

But, this does not mean ranked players are better than unranked ones. This simply means they have played and had more tournament successes.

USTA points also have another good thing about them. The more points you have, the better chance you have to get into tournaments and face a weaker player. Some tournaments have cutoffs and those without many points will not be able to enter. Other tournaments require you to have at least certain amount of points to even sign up.