In a nutshell, here are the changes:
* The NCAA spring tournament will still have 16 regionals. They will be followed by four super-regional tournaments with the four winners going to the NCAA Final Four Tournament. There will be a site selected each year for the final tournament.
* All singles matches will be the best of three tiebreak sets with a ten point tiebreak for the third set.
* All doubles matches will be a six game set with a tiebreak at 6-all.
* There will be no warm-up at the beginning of the matches. Players will do a coin toss and then begin play.
* Time between singles and doubles matches in a dual match is now five minutes.
* Shorten the time for the changeover to 60 seconds.
UPDATE AS OF AUGUST 23, 2012
The committee announced that they have rescinded some of the changes and will only keep the following:
* No warmup.
* Time is 60 seconds on changeovers.
* Time between singles and doubles is five minutes.
18 comments:
There won't be much time after the coin toss to climb back up in the chair, fill in the names on the score card and make the announcement while they are standing there waiting on you so they can start!
What a great way to screw up a good tournament.
wow I hope the ITA committees tell the NCAA hell no to these changes, it will kill College Tennis. Who cares about shorter matches. All a 3rd Set MTB is create a gamble on who wins, rather than letting the better player win.
The weaker teams will all vote for this, since it increases their chance of getting an upset win.
Question: Do the coaches vote or do the school administrators?
Awful. God awful.
And the USTA and NCAA wonder why the American tennis player has fallen off the map. They keep dumbing down the sport.
Why not have a coin flip for each match. Could be done with the match in about 3 minutes. The schools could have thousands of dollars in tennis balls, equipment, and coaches & officials.
I can see where it kind of penalizes the player who depends on wearing down his/her opponent but it also speeds things up to make ESPN happier.
On a good day even the weaker player can win a tiebreaker but remember that they had to win a set to get to that point.
It would be very interesting to hear the rationale behind each of these proposed changes. Frankly, like many other ITA officials, I'm scratching my head trying to figure out the driving force behind them. Randy, is there anyone you can go to to find the rationale, or is it just speed? I would think the ITA officials coordinators will be hearing soon from the coaches about reducing the amount of money paid officials for each match.
Wish people would quite making unnecessary changes to justify their jobs. Goes for the USTA as well as NCAA. Sad
Remember this was mandated by the NCAA administrators. The ITA and coaches had nothing to do with the change.
I'm pretty sure there were numerous coaches involved in making the decision.
While I certainly do not agree with all of the changes as described in this post, I do think that shortening the length of time it takes to complete a dual will hopefully broaden the fan base beyond diehards. One thing that you have to remember is that in colder climates, the majority of the dual matches are played indoors, and a lot of them on 4 courts. A dual on 4 courts is usually 3 1/2 to 4 hours minimum and close matches can take 5 hours or more to complete. I don't think steps to make the college tennis more spectator friendly will kill it, but admittedly some of the proposed changes seem pretty odd.
OMG looks like the pro chairs will become even more incompetent. HELL we already know they can't keep up with electronic scoring devices, as discussed on this blog.
After a little research, here's the NCAA Committee members who came up with this decision:
Cathy Beene - Georgia Southern University
Tad Berkowitz - University of Arizona Men's Head Coach
TIM CASS- University of New Mexico Deputy AD
Jeff Conyers - Southern University Women's Head Coach
Alex Dorato - Yale University Men's Head Coach
D.J. Gurule - Gonzaga University Women's Head Coach
Callie Hubbell - Conf USA Coordinator of Student Services
The only member with any National Ranking history is Our very own Tim Cass.
Hello,
These are suggestions by a committee composed of back benchers in ITA,
When the coaches vote, this silliness will be shot down,
and the committee members can
go back to back slapping each other about how forward, did someone say obamaoid, their thinking is;
we are so lucky to have our betters instruct us on doing it just right.
Actually, I would like to see ALL of tennis go to the third set TB format and I am a healthy tennis player - who loves grinding down my opponents. The reason is - I am also a sponsor of tournaments and I hate to see the LOWER AND LOWER turnout for Texas Tennis Tournaments because of the heat. And YES, I am an OLD traditionalist and I still would love to see the STB for the third in ALL matches. This idea makes sense for television, tournament organizers, officials and especially the health of tennis players.
More importantly - If this happens - I will only be able to eat half of my cold Subway sandwich between doubles and singles. Thus helping make my butt a little smaller...
BACO
Based on the committee comments, these changes were to promote espn tv requests. (It has been learned that actually NO discussions have occurred with TV people yet).
Question 1 is: How does reducing the changeover time benefit TV? They will not have enough time to get in commercials. The US OPEN allows a minimum of 2 minutes on stadium court match changeovers.
I look for this proposed change to be dropped also.
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