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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham, NC

    Duke Hammers Tarheels!!

    I thoroughly enjoy headlines like this, for any sport!!

    No. 3 Duke Hammers No. 5 Tar Heels, 4-0

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO

    Tennis Math?

    I love the story, and thanks, 94duke, for the timely post.

    I do, however, have two dumb questions about college team tennis matches:

    1. How do they keep score? I see Duke was 3-0 in doubles and 3-0 in singles (w/ three matches "unifinished"). How does that become 4-0?

    2. Why don't they finish the matches? Surely it would be satisfying to the players to play until the end. OK, if it's all over and the sets are 1-1, then play some kind of tiebreaker. It would make the individual players' records more meaningful.

    I am familiar with men's college from the old days; I saw Stan Smith and Bob Lutz play in the NCAAs in San Antonio several decades ago. The team matches in that era always played to a completion.

    sage

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Lewisville, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by sagegrouse View Post
    I love the story, and thanks, 94duke, for the timely post.

    I do, however, have two dumb questions about college team tennis matches:

    1. How do they keep score? I see Duke was 3-0 in doubles and 3-0 in singles (w/ three matches "unifinished"). How does that become 4-0?

    2. Why don't they finish the matches? Surely it would be satisfying to the players to play until the end. OK, if it's all over and the sets are 1-1, then play some kind of tiebreaker. It would make the individual players' records more meaningful.

    I am familiar with men's college from the old days; I saw Stan Smith and Bob Lutz play in the NCAAs in San Antonio several decades ago. The team matches in that era always played to a completion.

    sage
    Not an expert on tennis, but the team scoring is one point for doubles (whether the doubles matches go 2-1 or 3-0, just one team point) and then the singles matches each count a point.
    They stop playing the singles matches when the match victory has been secured by one team. Which seems kind of odd to me, too.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by roywhite View Post
    Not an expert on tennis, but the team scoring is one point for doubles (whether the doubles matches go 2-1 or 3-0, just one team point) and then the singles matches each count a point.
    They stop playing the singles matches when the match victory has been secured by one team. Which seems kind of odd to me, too.
    Thanks. -- sage

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Durham, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by roywhite View Post
    Not an expert on tennis, but the team scoring is one point for doubles (whether the doubles matches go 2-1 or 3-0, just one team point) and then the singles matches each count a point.
    They stop playing the singles matches when the match victory has been secured by one team. Which seems kind of odd to me, too.
    Very odd indeed. They might as well explicitly say that they only care about how the school performs, and not at all about how the players do themselves. Seems a bit offensive, if you ask me. (Unless there is a solid administrative reason that they do this, in which case I would completely retract this post.)

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Quote Originally Posted by roywhite View Post
    They stop playing the singles matches when the match victory has been secured by one team. Which seems kind of odd to me, too.
    Isn't that how tennis is normally done? You never see 3-0 wins in individual women's tennis or 4-1/5-0 wins in individual men's. Why should team play be any different?

  7. #7
    IIRC, the trend toward shortening matches began a number of years ago in the NCAA team competition.

    It used to be that doubles was best two of three sets, and each doubles match was worth one point. A player could end up spending five hours on court and have to come back and do it again for two to six days in a row. It also screwed up the schedule if an early match lasted five hours.

    They started not completing singles matches whose outcome was meaningless, then switched the doubles to one eight-game pro set. Now it's unusual for a match to go much over three hours, even if it ends 4-3 and the last match goes three sets.

    Don't remember when that became the rule in the regular season.

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