The doubles portion of this tournament ended today, and my son and his partner won first place.

As the number two seed, they beat the number one seed 8-2 in the finals.  The top two seeds met in the finals, so in terms of seeding, I feel vindicated.

It is interesting to note that in terms of seeds keeping their seeds, there was only one upset with the corrected seeding - and that was in the finals.  With the original seeding, the #1 seed lost to the #2 seed, the #2 seed lost to an unseeded team, the #3 seed lost to an unseeded team, and the #4 seed lost to an unseeded team.  So obviously, the original seeding was pretty far out of whack.  It's amazing to me that auto generated rankings lists can be so far different.

One of the problems with UTR is that they don't have a UTR for doubles (although I'm told by Trevor that they are diligently working on this).  Instead, a lot of doubles seedings are done by a combination of singles ranking -- which seems pretty bad to me (I guess in the absence of anything else, like a dartboard) this is probably the best you can do.  I think doubles is a very different game, and there are plenty of cases where kids can be great doubles players and lousy singles players, and vice versa.

One of the higher ups at the SCTA told me basically that seeding is very contentious and that you should be prepared to beat everyone, so seeding is unnecessary.  Which seems completely ludicrous to me.  Tournaments are like little wars of attrition.  Each match wears on you.  The cumulative effects of matches start to add up as the tournament goes on.  If you only had to play one person a week, giving you sufficient rest in between.  Then yeah, if your only intent is to win the entire tournament, then maybe seeding wouldn't be necessary.  But that's not how these tournaments run.  You can have two, three, even four matches a day (two doubles and two singles).  And then consecutive days of matches.  With this many matches, kids get tired, and the strength of your consecutive opponents can play a big role in your success!  If you've had success in tournaments, and you've earned the right to be a seed - you deserve the (statistically speaking) easier matches.

That's it for today.  I left the tournament today after Zack and his partner won the finals in doubles, and Zack getting wiped out in singles.  I got back to San Diego around 4pm, went to a friends house to watch the last half of the Super Bowl, got home, helped my daughter for an hour and a half with calculus, and now I'm writing this -- I'm exhausted.  Good night!

Put your seat belts on, this blog entry is going to be a long one. Hopefully there's some useful info in it. I just got done spending an hour and a half talking with Trevor Kronemann. Let me start off by saying I think this guy's heart is in the right place. I really do believe he's trying to do what's best, but it's complicated, really complicated.

Rating tennis players against one another is incredibly difficult. We have a "point" system in place (PPR - Points Per Round), and I think the SCTA is trying to move away from it. I think no matter what system you do have in place, people will be able to game it and exploit it in any way that they can for their own gain -- as they should! The first step of any rating system is to try to understand how it works. The point system is relatively simple - play tournaments, every tournament has a "level" associated with it, accumulate points based on how far you get in these tournaments, boom - you have a ranking. Is that the best way to do it? Is that the most accurate way to do it? Not so sure... People can game the system by traveling to locations where there are a bunch of weaker players, accumulate a bunch of points, and then be seeded and avoid the tougher players early in a bigger tournament, thereby gaining more points. It's self fulfilling in a way.

UTR (Universal Tennis Ranking - http://www.universaltennis.com/) is another rating system. I won't go into all the details about how this rating system works (mostly because I don't completely know myself!), but basically, it ranks you based on the level of player you faced, and not necessarily how far you got in a tournament in a draw. So you could travel to some remote area, and play a bunch of weak players and beat them, or you could stay closer to home, play a few stronger players, and get a better UTR ranking. I believe under the UTR ranking system, when you play a tough player, you can still be well served to get games off that player. In order to face the tougher players, you still have to play tournaments, and you may still need to get far, but getting knocked out in the first round by the #1 seed may not be so bad (especially if you were able to keep it close).

One of the goals of the UTR is to put more emphasis on how you play against people around the same level vs. becoming one of those crazy parents who drive all over the place to accumulate points (and crazy parents - you know who you are!). The more I talked with Trevor, the more it seemed like this was the direction the SCTA is moving in. Like anything in life, change is tough. Personally, I wish he'd just impose the system and be done with it. He has a more tactful approach and wants to bring people along gently -- again, I'd prefer he just rip the bandaid off :-).

Okay, so back to what happened in this tournament (Fullerton). He didn't actually Auto Seed, he manually entered the seeds. "Aha!" you say. Well, not quite so fast. What he did is he went into some weird auto-generated list of rankings, and based on that he made the seeds (and then he or director proceeded to manually enter them into the TDM). The ranking list that he used was not called "USTA ratings list" specifically, but he explained to me that that was yet another ranking list that was basically like NTRP (adult rating list) for juniors. This is yet another ranking list, and I did see it with my own eyes (he brought a laptop to show me). I can believe in his mind how he thought this was "Auto Seed". I'm not sure exactly how the transaction happened, but I can believe that he looked at this list and then told the director the seeds, and then the director entered the seeds manually. And I can believe in his mind he considered that "Auto Seed." The list was "auto"-matically generated, and he used that list, whether he hit the "Auto Seed" button in the TDM is an irrelevant detail.

I think there may be some weird political thing going on about what rating system to use - because UTR was not an invention of the USTA, people may be reluctant to use it. But it seems like as far as Trevor is concerned, UTR all the way (and no one has told him to NOT use it). The sooner you jump on the UTR bandwagon, the better.

One of the side effects of using UTR is that people may be less willing to play the lower level tournaments; why bother if no high rated UTR players are in it. The reality is that the point system is probably not going anywhere anytime soon. That's still going to be a factor for some things inside of the USTA (especially at the National level).  I could easily see them doing something like using the PPR ranking for entry into the bigger tournaments (with limited draw sizes) and UTR for seeding.

Another thing Trevor talked about was possibly having smaller draw sizes for the larger tournaments. And possibly even having qualifying draws for some of the spots in the main draw. Some tournament directors believe anyone that signs up for a tournament should be given a chance. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Today, my son play a fairly non-competitive match. He beat the kid 6-0, 6-0. So, basically, I had to wake up early, get my kid ready, drive an hour and a half up from San Diego, sit through a half hour match and be done for the day. As Trevor was talking me through that, I did think that a feed in draw would not be a bad idea. I think his ultimate goal is to have competitive matches at as many levels as he can. Obviously, nothing is perfect, but if he can tier the tournaments and have alternatives for people at the various levels, it may be able to move in that direction.

Trevor also talked about communicating how draws/seeds were going to be made up and posting that on the SCTA website. I think that would be helpful -- and again, I think he's trying, so that's good. And I'd even love to see directors posting on the front page of their tournament website, what method they are using to create the seeds. It's annoying that it isn't the same for every tournament and that someone doesn't just mandate the method, but I guess these things take time...

What would be really interesting is if they could hire a mathematician, and after each tournament, see how each of the different rating systems held up. If there is one rating system that is continually outperforming the others, then that should probably be the one they use (maybe they already did this with UTR being the winner??). This is a mathematicians dream job.

We talked about "All Factors Method" for rating - and I think we just have a fundamental disagreement here (it's okay for people to disagree). I don't like the concept of the all factors method because it introduces subjectivity into the process. Trevor likes the "All Factors Method" because it allows him to take things into account that no single rating system can. In my opinion he is probably trying to make too many people happy. I think that in the end, people want to know exactly where their seeding came from, more than they like the idea of thinking someone is manipulating the system. It's not worth it to get that extra 2% accuracy (and it's not even clear if it will).

I'm still a little bit bothered that it took so much effort to have him take a second look at everything, but he's overwhelmed and new to the job, so i'll cut him a little slack... this time :-) Like I said, I think he's trying to do the right thing - I really believe that. And I can tell you, I would not want that job.

The response from other parents to this situation has been mostly positive. But there are all types of people. I got this text message from one of the parents:

Phil, so I heard you were messing around with the doubles 12 seeds, thx, it messed up the 14 as well

Uh... Seriously? I tried to address something I saw wrong in the seeding of the 12s doubles and you're upset about something in a totally different age group -- and you're blaming me for that? What???

But I also had some great feedback as well.

Hi Phil,

When they changed the draw I didn't understand why. My son (WITHHELD) & his partner (WITHHELD) had a fairly easy match and now that the draw was re-done they face a much tougher opponent. After a friend sent me the link to the story you wrote I now understand why the draw was re-done and I stand by the decision 100%. I explained to the boys the seeding were completely off and the error was corrected.. It's about time someone stood up to this very questionable organization. Thank you very much for sending the wake-up call and turning the light bulb on.

Good luck to Zachary this weekend.

Good luck to everyone in the tournament, and everyone, do your reverse rain dance!

Trevor Kronemann, Director of Junior Tennis SCTA reached out to me last night over e-mail.  I give the man a lot of credit for doing that.  I can tell you that if someone was as displeased with the job I was doing, and was as vocal about it as I am being -- I'm not sure I'd be able to be as polite and calm about the entire situation as he is.  He has only been at the job since November -- I didn't know that.  That's pretty new to the job; I wonder if he anticipated how difficult it would be and if he has any regrets :-).  He offered to meet with me in person this weekend and I agreed.  I hope we do meet face to face and we can have a productive dialog.

If I were in his position, the one thing I would do, is I would be quick to admit mistakes.  It's okay to make mistakes; everyone makes them.  But you should be quick to own up to them, and you should come completely clean (this is one of the best lessons I learned from my father at an early age).  Trevor told me last night that he had accidentally selected the "USTA ratings list" as the rank list type when selecting Auto Seed, yet a friend of mine (who has access to the TDM software) said no such rank list type exists.  So something isn't right here.  I looked at my kids various rankings, and I couldn't find that ranking list type (amongst the 82 that were there -- why are there so many ranking list types??  Seriously!).

So what's going on here?  Either he mis-typed the name of the rank list type in his e-mail to me, sees different ranking list types with his login to the TDM, or made the rankings manually and is reluctant to admit it now.  I don't know.  And I am not accusing anybody of anything - I just want a valid explanation for what happened.  Because again, this is not about the draws being wrong, this is about having full accountability for how they were drawn up wrong in the first place, and why there was so much dismissive resistance to changing them.  It's not as if "hey, we screwed up in making the draws, we fixed the draws, everything is okay now."  That would have been the case if that was the first response.  Instead - we have this mess.

The draws were changed last night.  Less than a half an hour after I posted my last entry.  I'm happy that the draws were corrected, but like I said earlier - there is unfinished business.

It's Wednesday and I'm exhausted.  It was a tough day at work.  And to be honest with you, keeping up with this soap opera is exhausting (in addition to everything else I have going on in my life).  I really never intended for this to get as big as it did.  I got in touch with the lady who runs Parenting Aces (if you've never been, I highly recommend this site: http://www.parentingaces.com).  Someone posted my blog to her site, she noticed it and contacted me.  She has over 100,000 subscribers and no signs of slowing down.  We chatted about what was going on and about life in junior tennis - in the end, she agreed to give me some exposure.  So nice.  Riding on the shoulders of giants.

She has two kids in college and so is out of the junior tennis scene, but she has lived through it.  And what she told me was so discouraging.  There's very little (my optimistic side interpreted "no" as "very little") chance things will change and people within the organization (not all of course) will act in a vindictive manner.

This entire episode seems so silly.  It could have all been avoided by a simple reply and the willingness to fix the wrong.  Here's an example of how this could have been so much easier:

From: "Marino, William" <wmarino@chapman.edu>

Subject: RE: Chapman University Fall Junior Open Tournament (level 4)

Date: December 9, 2015 at 1:54:11 PM PST

To: Phil Pellouchoud <ppellouchoud@Dexcom.com>

I fixed it..  The system laid it out that way.  I didn't notice it.  Thanks

-----Original Message-----

From: Phil Pellouchoud [mailto:ppellouchoud@Dexcom.com] 

Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2015 1:46 PM

To: Marino, William

Subject: Chapman University Fall Junior Open Tournament (level 4)

Hi,

Thank you for publishing the draws, but the draws do not look correctly laid out for G16s.

My daughter is the #3 seed and she should be on the same side as the #2 seed.

The placement of the seeds does not make any sense.

-phil

See how easy that was?  Instead, this has blown up way bigger than I expected or wanted.  It may seem like I'm always complaining about draws - but to be honest, I can count on one hand the number of times I've complained to the tournament director about the draws.  And my kids are playing tournaments almost every weekend (and have been for the last 5+ years).

I am beginning to think that the draws were made out of spite.  I don't make that statement lightly, but I am running out of viable explanations and the people running the show won't give me answers to very basic questions.  I ask specific questions and I get answers to questions I didn't ask.  I really don't know what to make of it.

I hope anyone reading this does not think this is about an incorrect draws being corrected.  It's not.  It's about accountability.  It's about transparency.  It's about being open.  It's about having a system in place that's fair and objective.  It's about not letting egos and spite be a part of the system.  It has almost nothing to do with the draw being incorrect.

Sorry this post was heavy on frustration and short on substance, but like I said - I'm exhausted.  Good night.

Today is Tuesday, it's 5:30pm and I see this on the tournament website.

Doubles Draws All doubles draws are down until Wednesday noon. Please check back after noon for any changes.

They took down the doubles draws - presumably (hopefully) to remake them based on something that makes sense.  I guess I should feel some small sense of victory, but I guess I will withhold judgement until I see the new draws.  I am going to assume that someone at a high enough level saw the lunacy of what they had and decided in the best interest of the integrity of the organization, decided to fix it.  At least I can only hope for that.

I hope they do fix it, don't get me wrong.  But some part of me feels like even if they did, there would be unfinished business.  Why did it require an ordinary person to complain two levels above the tournament director, only to be rebuffed twice, having to write this blog and attempting to spread it as far as I could to enact change for something that was clearly wrong?  Something is broken in the process.

I learned some information today about how draws are made, and I thought I'd share that with you here.  I was fairly ignorant to what a director goes through when making the draws.  I assumed you selected all the players in the tournament, clicked on a button, the computer would pick the seeds and randomly place the unseeded players, and voila - you'd be done.  Nope - not quite that simple.

First of all, the director has the ability to "Auto Seed" or "Manual Seed."  To me, the ability to manually seed players seems inherently bad.  I won't pretend I understand all the reasons why that's necessary, but I'll ignore that for the moment because the people I talked to regarding this tournament told me the director used "Auto Seed."  Auto Seed to me seems pretty straight forward - automatically generate the seeds.  Again, not quite that simple.

The seeding done by the "Tournament Data Manager (TDM)" (the software used to create a tournament and the draws), pops up a window when a tournament director hits the "Auto Seed" button.  The Auto Seed pop up window contains an entry called "Rank List Type."  This Rank List Type allows the director to specify what basis they want to use as the method for seeding.  There are a bazillion choices here, I am guessing that section ranking, national ranking, and grandmother's shoe size are all valid choices.

In the interest of full disclosure and transparency, I asked the tournament director what "Rank List Type" they used to create the Boys 12s doubles draw for this tournament, because I would like to see what possible ranking scheme would have not had my son and his partner seeded.  I have not heard back yet.  It seems like most of the e-mail exchanges I've had with the USTA officials have been polite while extolling the virtues of transparency and openness.  Yet, every time I ask for specific details regarding how things are done, I get the silent treatment.  It's frustrating.

I hope someone from the USTA is reading this because I want to speak to you directly here.  I'm one of the good guys.  Go look in your complaint department, I'm willing to bet money that you won't find a single complaint about me or my two kids who play competitive junior tennis.  That is incredibly unusual for someone with two kids competing at the highest level.

I'm on the front lines here.  I'm the one waking up at 4am to prepare to drive from San Diego to LA for an 8am match.  I'm the one whose driving 12 hours round trip to Tucson over Thanksgiving and New Years.  I'm the one whose spending ungodly amounts of money and time supporting my kids tennis addiction.  I'm that guy.  And I'm not asking for a lot in return.  I don't want special treatment, I don't want things I don't deserve.  I just want to be treated fair, and when I don't think I'm being treated fair, and I present a reasonable argument, I want someone to look into it.  The dismissive attitude of the people involved is hurting the sport.  The attitude has become one of putting up barriers hoping problems go away instead of deciphering which are the fake problems that can be ignored and which are the real problems which should be addressed.  We're all in this together, put aside your egos and hurt feelings, and let's build champions!

There it is.  I said it.  Yup.  the SCTA is either incompetent or corrupt.  Before you dismiss me or what I just said, please allow me the courtesy to explain myself.  Please read the entire post before passing judgement.

Now any parent of a competitive tennis player knows that playing competitive junior tennis requires an immense amount of commitment from the parents.  I'm not some wealthy guy who can pay to have their coach drive / fly them to tournaments.  I'm just a regular guy, with a regular day job, trying to let my kids compete in the sport they love.  I never played tennis as a youth and to be honest, I don't really care about tennis - my sport is soccer.  I'm just a regular dad who is trying to support their kids.

When I see an injustice like I am about to explain, it irks me.  Not because it's that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but because I feel like it's just rotten.  And most importantly, it's just wrong.  The USTA (and SCTA) are a big monopoly.  There is really no other place to go if your kid wants to play competitive junior tennis in the US.  Yes, there are other leagues, but let's be real, the USTA / SCTA are a monopoly.  People are probably scared to upset the people there, probably worried about rocking the boat, or retribution -- not me.

There are a few big tournaments a year, for which there are big points.  These are called "designated" tournaments - and getting far in them (or even winning them) is prestigious.  It really means something.  One of these tournament is the "71st Annual Fullerton Junior Closed Tournament."  The doubles draw for boys 12s for this tournament were made as such:



On the number 3 line is my kid, Zachary Pellouchoud (and his doubles partner - Jiaxi Ma).  As you can see, they are unseeded and would wind up facing the #1 seed if they got past their first opponents in the round of 16.  It's not like I'm scared of the #1 seed, but you will see from the e-mail exchange below, it is simply unfair.

I had so many people text message me about how crazy this was and how it didn't make any sense and how I should complain to the director.  So, I did (the guy on the CC is the head of the SCTA).

From: Phil Pellouchoud <ppellouchoud@dexcom.com>

Subject: 71st Annual Fullerton Junior Closed Tournament (Level 2)

Date: January 24, 2016 at 8:15:47 PM PST

To: tensmd@aol.com

Cc: TKronemann@scta.usta.com

Hi,

I am trying to understand how the seeding got done for the Boys 12s doubles in this tournament.

I am looking at the doubles ranking for SCTA and I see the following:

Zachary Pellouchoud and Jiaxi Ma are ranked 2 and 10 respectively yet are unseeded for this tournament.

#1 seed Sebastian Gorzny and Dominique Rolland are ranked 6 and 14 respectively

#2 seed Hudson Rivera and Chase Thompson are ranked 4 and 5 respectively

#3 seed Nathan Caoile and Marcus Sebastian 63 and 17 respectively!!!!!!

#4 seed Kai Braver and Rithvik Krishna are ranked 8 and 11 respectively

What formula is being used to determine the seeding here?  Because I can’t figure out any rational scheme that would have Zachary and Jiaxi unseeded compared to the existing seeds (especially #3).

-phil

I expected that the seeding would be changed.  We're plenty far from the start of the tournament that no one could legitimately complain they didn't know the draw had changed and when something is wrong, you should fix it.  I don't know what kind of math they are using, but I cannot come up with any scheme that would have Zack and Jiaxi unseeded compared to the other seeded pairs.  Sum of doubles rankings, average of doubles rankings, highest ranking, lowest ranking -- I just don't get it.  Maybe they used common core math to come up with the seeding.  I just would like a clear and transparent explanation.

Needless to say - here was the director's response:

From: David Nowick <tensmd@aol.com>

Subject: Re: 71st Annual Fullerton Junior Closed Tournament (Level 2)

Date: January 25, 2016 at 2:42:55 PM PST

To: ppellouchoud@Dexcom.com

after reviewing with SCTA

seedings will stand as posted

best of luck

dave

I responded to his e-mail asking for what the formula is for determining the seedings - no response yet.

The USTA/SCTA creates a point system whereby they use it for determining seeding (or at least are supposed to).  The ranking (determined by total points accumulated) also determine who gets invited to special events like Team events (e.g. Tommy Tucker), "Zonals" and "National" tournaments.  When the integrity of the system cannot be trusted, when directors and officials start making things up without explanation or act in a prejudiced manner - the people in the system need to speak out, and that's what I'm doing.