Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

I remember being the worst player in weekly round robin doubles outings and feeling sorry for the latest person who had to be stuck with me and take her turn losing a set. I remember being drop shotted and trick shotted upon ad nauseum. I remember not understanding why I was losing doubles matches to people who I felt like didn’t possess anywhere near the quality of groundstrokes as I did. I remember being labeled over and over and over again as a singles player after doubles matches and hating it. I remember trying to beat this particular partnership in practice matches for nearly a year, falling in straight sets every time, and on at least one occasion, shedding tears over the seemingly hopelessness of it all. I remember losing to pushers. I remember not knowing how to volley. I remember not playing myself in tough, must-win team matches – much to the confusion of my teammates – because I didn’t have confidence in my tennis game. I remember needing to prove my tennis abilities to everyone. I remember forgetting how to hit forehand groundstrokes and feeling so very lost. I remember ducking from screaming balls coming straight at me when I was at the net. I remember being blown off the court by vicious baseline groundstroke winners. I remember being mad at my partner for making ME look bad. I remember being bumped up to 4.5 and when I asked someone to join my newly created 4.5 team, she said “Ah, looking to get into the 4.5 captaining game already, huh?”

I remember. I remember because every once in awhile I’ll be jarred into one of these memories after a tennis outing in which I’m startled by how different my experiences are today than they’ve been over the last five years.

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So I’ve never understood the USTA Playoffs.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE USTA Playoffs. I love pretty much everything about it. First of all, I personally do stupid well during the Playoffs…to the point where opponents will want to play me again after that weekend only to be very disappointed at my true tennis abilities when playoff testosterone isn’t coursing through my veins and I’m playing very much within my mind.

But what I really love is how much heightened everything is. This is recreational adult league tennis at its finest. I love the do-or-die atmosphere. I love the tension. I love the captains who hover around the tournament desk to try to sneak peaks at the opposing teams’ line-ups (captains are awful human beings. Watch out for that).

I love the people who are most certainly not treating the poor person running the tournament desk like they themselves would want to be treated and who need to know what’s going on RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW at all times (see my last parentheses).

I love that opposing players will glare at me when they think I’m over-cheering my players (there’s no such thing as over-cheering during playoff tennis).

And I love, love the camaraderie. You will never love your teammates more than when you are pulling for them with all your heart and soul to win their very important, very big deal tennis matches.

What I don’t love about USTA Playoffs, however, is the structure.

It confounds me.

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I’ve decided to start playing tennis tournaments this year. A coach said playing more meaningful matches would help make me a better player and I pretty much do what coaches tell me to do if it means I get better.

Well that and I finally feel comfortable enough with my tennis game where I’m pretty sure I won’t be blown out by most opponents in the first round and it’ll actually be worth it to pay the exorbitant entry fees (for me that would be any dollar amount over $5) that sometimes only guarantees me one match in an event.

For those not in the know, a tennis tournament typically offers multiple events players can enter into (singles, doubles, mixed doubles, etc.), and each event requires its own entry fee.

In the first tournament I played in to kick start this tournament journey, it proudly said on the website “You spoke, we listened” (the bold is all them) and that it was changing its consolation rules. No more consolation for any doubles events because a survey was sent out and “62% were in favor of eliminating consolation brackets in doubles in order to allow a player to register for two doubles events.”

I feel like those 62% don’t understand basic math…but the people running the tournament sure do!

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