This Thing Called Research
Christy Vutam | May 7, 2014As a captain of recreational adult tennis teams, I am obligated to do something called “research.” Players will say something like “I trust my captain to do the proper research, put out the right line-up, and lead our team to first place.”
Sometimes my teams will do quite well and the players will credit me for doing a terrific job of this thing called “research.”
Sometimes I will tell my team, “Okay, let me do some research and crunch some numbers, and I’ll get back to you all on the line-up as soon as I can.”
Can I tell you a secret? I have no idea what doing “research” entails.
I say I do research just cause it sounds like something I should be doing. Like I’m not just throwing spaghetti against a wall and seeing which strands of noodles and meatballs win their three-set coin flips. Then when one of those coin flip wins turn out to be the deciding match, I end up looking like a mad genius with amazing captaining prowess who did an excellent job of “researching.”
Maybe I’m doing it wrong. For me, doing “research” means mindlessly clicking through the faceless names on the opposing team and glancing at meaningless scores against more names I don’t recognize. For hours.
This is what I do instead of finding a cure for cancer.
Exactly what am I looking for here? Anyone want to help me out?
Looking at someone’s name doesn’t tell me whether she has a great backhand, is a pusher, or will talk my ear off on the change-overs and that I should have set my belongings on the other side of the court. In the sun. Which reminds me, I need to get one of those umbrellas that hook into the fence…
Looking at someone’s undefeated doubles record from another league doesn’t tell me if she was just riding the coattails of her super-duper, ex-college playing partner and she’s rather harmless and de-clawed without said partner who oh, hey, isn’t on this team we’re about to face in this particular league.
Looking at whatever flight so-and-so is in in another league doesn’t tell me anything about her actual quality of play. There are hundreds of factors that go into what level teams end up in, and an individual’s ability isn’t among the first hundred.
Did you know that of all the flights in this other non-USTA, ladder-formatted league that my eclectic group of players hail from, the best player is in the lowest one? It’s the darndest thing. She says she really likes her teammates and the camaraderie. I nod and smile.
I usually don’t know anyone on the opposition. I don’t know which eight of the twenty bazillion players on the opposing roster will be playing this week. I don’t know how the captain will decide to wield her players for this particular match-up. And even if I did know, what would I possibly do with that information? I don’t know anything about them!
And even if I was familiar with the tennis games of everyone on the other team and knew the line-up that would be thrown against my team…like seriously, you think I’m going to be able to make wise match-up decisions based on abilities and tendencies and what technique beats what??
As if I understood deeply the intricacies of all of my twenty bazillion players’ games – not to mention having a firm grasp on whose styles fit well together for doubles pairings – when I myself wonder which player within me is going to show up at any given stroke.
At some point during the “research” phase, it’ll eventually dawn on me it’s not the other team’s players I should be worried about. It’s mine.
Oh, boy.
To be continued…
If only I had back all the time I’ve burned through
trying to figure out what my opponents are going
to do….sigh…..
Exactly, Lynne! EXACTLY!!! 😀
Save the work. Put your #1 team at the #2 position, #2 at #3, and you weakest team at #1. Isn’t that how everyone does it?
It usually is, Mike…one of my opponents put their #1 team at the #1 position, #3 at #2, and their second strongest team at #3. Mind BLOWN.
Yeah, this is always my least favorite part of captaining. It’s almost always a crap-shoot any way you play it. There are a couple of captains that I know that always flip things around and always do it the same way. For them, I usually flip my lineup so that it matches theirs 1, 2, and 3. For the rest, I usually just hope for the best. At times I’ve spent more time trying to come up with a killer lineup than others but you just never know who’s going to be available for the other team and who’s not and that can completely change their strategy. Regardless, it’s a real pain.
Officially, the USTA says that there is no meaning to the order of the courts so there should not be any need for strategy. In my opinion, that’s part of the problem. I believe that the USTA should begin weighting the courts so that there’s more of an incentive for teams to play for the lower numbered courts. Court 1 should be worth more than Court 2, and Court 2 should be worth more than Court 3. In my opinion, this would make the job of captaining much more interesting and less of a crap shoot – more of a game of Chess rather than a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors – more skill than luck, One interesting aspect of this type of arrangement would be the “3 doubles, 2 singles” format where it becomes more advantageous to focus on strengthening the 2nd Singles court than it does the 3rd Doubles court. For teams short on singles players (very common in my area), it would be interesting to see how that dynamic would play out.
I doubt we’ll ever see anything like this in USTA league play but it would be a cool thing to try IMHO.
Maybe it’s not USTA, but here in Houston (HTA) we now have that way of playing. The lines are weighted and you don’t win the league by winning against teams, but overall points at the end. Mixed doubles doesn’t have that, but all the rest do.