Hello World! This is my first ever attempt at this whole blog thing. I just came back from my first ever trip to a National USTA League Championship. I participated in the 9.0 Mixed Doubles. I had qualified for a Men's 5.0 National Championship about 7 years back, but I was a college student that couldn't afford the trip. Anyways, this first trip to Nationals was quite an experience.
Before I get into my rant, everyone who plays league tennis knows that in order to win and do well, you need ringers. For those who aren't familiar with the term "ringer", my definition of it is a player who is really strong for his NTRP rating that will win over 90% of his matches against that same skill level. I am all for recruiting talent as long as it is within the same guidelines and rules that everyone is playing by. For the upper divisions of the Men's league (4.0 - 5.0), there are some perennial teams that do well every year. The players on these teams are definitely strong for their levels, but by no means cheating. The PNW region definitely cracks down on this, and has taken an extreme crack down on ringers over the past two years. I think the state of Washington cracks down harder on this than Oregon though (i.e. How does someone like Dougal Williams that represents the USA for Men's 35's and played as #1 for the University of Oregon get rated as a 5.0? I've already got the early start bump up to 5.0, and I wouldn't last one second on the court with Dougal Williams). This leads me to the whole intent of this particular rant.
I just came back from this 9.0 competition at Nationals, and there was this player named Therina Steenkamp. She is rated a 4.5 in the NTRP system. We started warming up for our match against Therina and her male partner (also another 4.5, but a strong 4.5 and borderline 5.0 player). During warm up, we just saw Therina hit these unbelievable shots and volleys. We knew we were in for a battle, but we were game as my partner and I had done well all year. Then the match started, and Therina just started taking the match over unlike any other player I had seen in mixed doubles before. She had amazing service returns, incredible volleys, and a super kick serve. She pretty much dominated. We got blown off the court 6-0, 6-1 in probably 40 minutes. I had never received a whupping like this in my life ever. After the match, we thought she was the 5.0 with a 4.0 male partner, but then she tells us that they are both 4.5. 4.5!!!!! I've never seen 5.0 Men execute the volleys she was making or pound overheads the way she did. For mixed doubles, it's like bringing a knife to a gun fight! Anyhoo, we did some research on google and found out she played 4 years at a Division 1 University as the #1 player, and had won some rounds at Challenger events. Who the heck is letting this slide as a 4.5 rated player?!!! How did she not get appealed from the Southern district all year or DQ'd? No one in their right mind would ever think she's a 4.5 player. And get this, she even lost one match to another lady in Women's 4.5 during the year. The Southern district must be composed of "Super Ringers" that are like 1.5 levels higher than their actual rating.
This has been a long enough first entry, so I should wrap this up. If there is a point to this first blog post that I would like understood, it is that we need all the USTA districts to have equal playing rules. I don't care if Southern allows Super Ringers to play in the league if other districts are allowed to recruit the same type of caliber players for a team. That would at least allow for an equal playing field. We spend a lot of money to attend a National competition, and the last thing I want to experience is an unfair playing field against teams that we won't have a shot of competing with.
