Reason #1: QuickStart equipment Tournaments with small courts, deflated balls came about after 2010 and the results couldn’t be more clear. Wayne Bryan, father of Bob & Mike Bryan who I came to know while at Stanford, wrote a spot-on letter to the USTA a few years ago about how it’s ruining the game … and he’s right! If you have free time, look up the letter he wrote. Kudos, Wayne! From experience working with players, I see this is what happens … at the time a child is good enough to play points with real equipment and real tennis balls, they have the confidence to play tournaments. Then they are blindsided that the tournaments are played with deflated tennis balls and small courts. This goes one of two ways, the coach convinces the child it’s good for them and they try it. Or, the family of the player says it’s stupid and they will wait until they get older. If the child decides to play, they don’t really feel like it’s real tennis, they will then blame the result on the equipment, be bitter and not want to play another tourna-
ment any time soon. Meanwhile, sitting in the lobby, my ears ring with parents venting about how they hate the equipment and their child isn’t used to it. I’ll always just listen until someone eventually asks me about it. As a tournament director, I’ll get emails before the tournament asking if we use real balls because they will only put their child in if we do. The other scenario is that the parents of the wannabe tournament child say this is the dumbest thing they ever heard and they will wait until their child is good enough to play older kids in real ball tournaments. Before this happens, the child may gravitate to another sport and being a tournament tennis player goes bye-bye. Of course, some kids fall through the cracks of this scenario. Those are the kids represented in the right column in the table above. Do we only want the kids who fall through the cracks? Of course not! My theory is that the equipment industry and individual clubs push the QuickStart initiative because it’s a money-maker. Clubs have to buy more
equipment and clubs can get more kids on a court and make more money in a smaller space. This is fine for younger kids, but as Wayne Bryan says in his letter, “10-yearsold is way too old for this modification!” The tournament entry numbers on Long island speak for themselves! Reason #2: Tournament format Is the tournament a round-robin? Are sets played to four? Is there a consolation? The formats are so confusing to people and it always seems like they are changing. Quick story … I had a student play in a Level 2 10s tournament earlier this year. There were four kids in the tournament. Simple format right? A semifinal, a final and make a consolation match if you want to give everyone two matches. Instead, the four kids played each other for 20-minute rounds on one-court. Two played while two waited. Sometimes a match would be a blow out and the child would be embarrassed because the other players were continued on page 60
LITennisMag.com • September/October 2016 • Long Island Tennis Magazine
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