Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

One of the supposed perks of being a captain is that you can choose who you want to play doubles with, which would imply that whomever I deign as deserving as being on the same court as myself is probably one of the best players on the team. Captains are not totally stupid. Well actually, a captain’s partner might be one of the worst players or one of the least enjoyable people to play with, and the captain is taking (yet another) one for the team.

For the record, I’m not totally stupid.

I do have players on my team that I very much would like to play doubles with, people I wouldn’t otherwise play doubles with in a real match (which kills me because what is the point of playing tennis if it’s not recorded anywhere for opposing captains to gaze at and go “Ooh, who is Christy’s partner?”) because this is the only tennis team we’re on together.

So this is perfect, right? I captain a tennis team comprised of people I want to play doubles with and whatdoyaknow I’m in charge of the line-up and it’s the most awesome power in the world. Nay, the universe. That’s how that works, right?

There are three cities-spanning team tennis leagues for women in my area. There are three leagues I could have possibly captained a team in. Being the brilliant person that I am, I captain a team in the one league that requires singles. I am a moron.

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As 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.

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As I’m sure is the case in your area, my area has non-USTA, cities-spanning leagues with a flight-ladder system to pass the time in between USTA seasons. Finish last and your tennis team moves down a flight. Finish first or even second and your tennis team moves up a flight.

With one last week of matches to go in such a league, one of the tennis teams I play on will for sure-for sure be finishing first in its flight this season.

“HAHA, SUCKERS!”

Is what the rest of the flight is thinking.

You know what’s going to happen after we finish first? We will be moving up next season. To the highest flight in the league. Where there are former college players and 5.0s running amok. Laughing. Smirking. Drop-shotting.

We did not think this one through.

I’m convinced opposing teams purposefully gave points away so they wouldn’t finish first. It looked pretty dicey there in the middle part of the season when all the teams were bunched up, but a few weeks of the other captains “selflessly” letting everyone play and coincidentally making those players drive an hour across major highways to play the team I’m on and whaddaya know. Those opposing teams are safely not in first place now.

We are. Sigh.

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Here’s the best part about being the captain of a 4.5 USTA team: after playing a non-USTA team tennis league match against strangers who were well on their way to steamrolling my behind before my partner stepped in, placed me on her back while I’m kicking and screaming, and dragged both of us across the finish line to victory, I will, of course, ask those opponents, “Would you be interested in playing on my USTA team?”

Their response: “I’m a 4.5…um…is this a 4.5 team?”

That’s fun. Tennis is fun. Everyone should experience how much fun tennis is.

Speaking of which, I am actually captaining a 4.0 USTA team in addition to the 4.5 one this summer.

*Music screeches to a halt*

What?

No. No, I can’t play on the team. I mean, not this summer, anyway. When mid-year ratings come out though, I should be…

Yes, that’s right. I’m just captaining a tennis team…that I can’t play on.

What? Is that, like, not a usual thing people do or something? Huh. Oh! So sorry for my rudeness. We haven’t been properly introduced, yet…

Hi, I’m Christy!

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Whoo-hoo, tennis is back, ba-by! The two non-USTA cities-spanning team tennis doubles leagues in my area start this week: TCD today and Metro this Saturday. But it’s TCD that holds a special place in my heart – it’s the league in which flocks of grown-up women recreational tennis players will be flouncing to their respective tennis match sites all uniformly decked out as a team in whatever tennis apparel the major sportswear corporations convinced them was the absolute latest in tennis fashion.

Basically those corporations mixed and matched any two colors together with the sole criteria being: the louder the better. They’re no dummies. They know their core audience.

And so I present to you my second post (here’s the first) centered around that one tennis must-have that adult women tennis teams have been working oh-so-hard to get just right this off-season. I am shocked it’s not the serve.

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USTA’s year-end ratings come out on Monday, December 2nd. I’ll find out whether I’ll have to play 4.5 for 2014 Spring USTA, or whether I’ll be able to compete at the 4.0 rating for next year’s Tri-Level Tournament. 😉

I don’t know what my 2014 tennis fate will be. I don’t understand the USTA rating system, and I haven’t done the research I probably should as a weekend tennis crazy (and if I ever start my research, I’ll be sure to check out what one of my commenters, Clif Render, wrote about it at his blog).

I batted .500 for 2014 4.5 Fall USTA. I played people who were rated 4.5s. I won. I lost. I went to lunch.

But where were my opponents on the spectrum of 4.5 rating land: low, medium, or high? Did I beat the right kind of 4.5s? Did I win enough games? Blahblahblah, it’s all very silly.

Do I still get to be the 4.0 in the upcoming USTA Combo Tournament and have a chance of avenging my loss in the area 7.5 finals? That’s mostly what I’m anxious to find out.

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I was mentally fried for at least a week from the Tri-Level Tournament two weekends ago. It was the weirdest feeling. I couldn’t even look my racquet in its face is how tired I was of tennis.

Ruh-roh.

It took till this past Saturday before I started recovering. USTA Fall Play-offs were going on that same weekend, and I don’t think I would have been able to play and do well in another high-stressed atmosphere so soon had my team been in it. I guess I didn’t understand just what I was in for that fateful tournament weekend, which turned out to involve playing very big deal, high-level tennis matches back-to-back-to-back, and so I didn’t take the appropriate steps afterwards. Of course, I’m going to blame the system for not preparing me adequately enough for such an experience.

An aside: I only had two 4.5s on my Tri-Level team, and they had to play back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. They won all their matches except the last one. They are amazing. But I’m going to persevere and continue on with my woe-is-me post, anyway.

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My USTA Tri-Level tennis team finished 2^nd in the area tournament last weekend. It’s the single greatest thing in the universe that has ever happened to me*. I think I’m supposed to add “tennis-wise” to the end of that sentence. Oh, well.

*Happened to me – as in lucking out with having awesome players who played and won while I sat in my cozy chair and sipped on grapes.

On Tuesday, the powers that be emailed out to everyone a congratulatory note that listed all the winners and runner-ups. I was stoked. The names of all the fearsome Grand Wizards in my area decorated that document. And then there was my name right alongside those luminaries. I couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear when I saw it.

I got all ready to print the email out so I could put it on a plaque and hang it in my Weekend Tennis shrine when I spotted it.

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Tri-Level is this weekend for my area. Tri-Level is a USTA team tennis tournament in which three lines of three different rated doubles teams (for example: 4.5/4.0/3.5 or 4.0-3.5-3.0) play each head-to-head match. Win at least two of those lines, and your team has won that match-up and on your merry way you go to the next one.

The idea behind the tournament, I believe, is to allow tennis friends across rating levels to be on the same USTA team for once and to compete together in this fun-with-racquets game we lovingly call tennis.

That’s the technical definition.

Here’s the underlying definition. Tri-Level is a team tennis tournament in which captains craft their rosters by grabbing and hoarding the bestest players of each rating level they can find. The recruiting call/text/email could be the first time the captains and the differently rated players have ever had correspondence.

Tri-Level uses the year-end ratings from the previous year, and the tournament itself generally occurs late the next calendar year. Boy does a lot happen in a year. So for this weekend’s tournament in November of 2013, what the computer said you were rated at the end of 2012 is the minimum* level you can play at.

*Players can always play up, but having people play up at Tri-Level would be…unconventional, as you’ll see, and goes against the unwritten spirit of the tournament.

Unwritten, that is, until now. 🙂

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• The Real Housewives of Tennis: this delightful blog post about the weekend tennis scene in Nashville and its effect on unsuspecting domestic engineers and 401K-compensated women proves it’s not all just in my head. However, I am unclear on the whole “lunch that the other team brings” bit. What’s this about lunch being provided? And here I am getting all giddy when my team plays at country clubs that have complimentary Goldfish…
• Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a Take Your Dog to Tennis Day? An actual thought I had when I brought my dog to a match I was playing. What a silly idea, right? Tennis balls flying everywhere and people running around willy-nilly: yeah, there is no way most dogs would sit nicely during all this delicious movement. Had there been other dogs at the tennis facility in honor of Take Your Dog to Tennis Day, my dog would have barked incessantly instead of being bored out of her mind.
• If your dog was watching you play tennis, do you think he/she would say, “Wow, she never moves that fast in real life” or “Yup, that dawdling looks about right”?

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