Our match against Kings Park was pretty competitive. Their captain teamed up with a young guy whom I questioned if he’s just out of college. He laughed and said ‘I wish’. Oh well, guess I forgot my 老花镜 presbyopic glasses.
We won first two games but then lost the set at 2-6. I thought .. .. it’s going to be over soon because the kid is really good, could fly, jump and dump, basically getting to everything, and the lady was a solid 3.5. But then my partner who did most lifting (as usually) came alive in the second set, sealed it with a assertive backhand cross court.
Wow .. we actually won it 6:4.
Was it mental or physical? Perhaps both. My partner’s enthusiasm certainly boosted my energy level too. But unfortunately I ran out of steam in the third set super tie break – lost it at 10:5.
Afterward, when I checked their rating did I realize that their combined rating was 7.5: he’s newly minted 4.0 but playing as 3.5 . So it was 6.5 vs 7.5. One of the match I played in January, my partner was a 4.0 and we faced 4.0 guy and 3.5 gal: 7.0 vs 7.5.
Those occurances were due to year end rating because Long Island and Manhattan start their Mixed Doubles league before the year end ranking becomes available. So whomever joined the team at their then-current level could play at that level regardless they were upgrade to a higher level or down graded. I was very surprised to see this happening. On one hand the USTA obsessively promotes and guards the NTRP to even out the playing field while on the other hand allows this kind of open cheating – potentially 8.0 too, plays in a 7.0 league. It seems very hypercritical.
Why doesn’t the league add a provision that should a player get bumped up at year end, s/he either resigns from the team (but the matches played stay; and fees refunded) if s/he couldn’t find appropriated ranked teammate OR play with their new ranking? Isn’t this the whole point of having a rating system in the first place??? – than openly cheat for a season?
Beam enlighten me up, Scotty
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